To Market, to Market

SAN LUIS OBISPO —  In small towns in Italy there is an event called the passegiata. Every evening virtually everyone who lives there turns out for a tour of the piazza. There’s nothing to buy; all the shops are closed (how else would the people who work there take part?). It’s not specifically religious in nature. It’s more a celebration of community.

That’s the first thing that comes to mind at the Thursday-night farmers market in San Luis Obispo.

Of course, this being America, there are things to do. Restaurant stands dot the five blocks of Higuera Street that are blocked off from 6 until 9 p.m. (admission free). At every intersection, there’s another kind of entertainment--everything from a gray-haired rock band (the Nothing New) to a kids’ puppet show.

The main attraction, at least ostensibly, is the produce. Some of the best farmers from the Central Coast and the Central Valley bring their fruits and vegetables to sell. You can find everything from $8 flats of olallieberries to meltingly sweet, tragically scarce Blenheim apricots.

But watch the thousands of people milling around and you get the distinct impression that nature’s bounty isn’t the sole reason for the phenomenal success of the event. Here you’ll find all kinds of people, everyone from skateboard thrashers to Winnebago-driving retirees. And they’re all happily rubbing shoulders, standing in the same lines and generally interacting in a way that they probably never would have without the market.

It’s a communal happening, an all-American passegiata.

*

Inspired by all we’d heard about the market in SLO (as nearly everyone in the area refers to it), we went up for the night. And we ended up staying the weekend, visiting other farmers markets, wineries and farm stands in the area.

It’s hard to believe that this wonderland of picturesque small towns and rolling hills is only four hours from Los Angeles--at least it was on this Thursday morning. My wife finished her morning meetings at 10, and just after noon we were sitting on the Pacific’s edge at El Capitan beach, eating a picnic lunch of prosciutto, fresh mozzarella, good bread, green olives and wine. By 3, we were relaxing in our room at the Garden Street Inn, a small bed and breakfast located in the heart of old San Luis Obispo, only blocks from the farmers market.

The bed-and-breakfast bit can be tough. Fans sometimes describe it as being like staying with a friend. Except that, in this case, you can’t choose your friends. And you certainly can’t choose their taste. Way too many sickeningly sweet Victorians have pretty much soured me on the experience, but our room at the Garden Street Inn was quite nice--once we’d hidden the sad-clown statuary.

Though the building is old, with sky-high ceilings and wonderful details, the rooms are fitted with modern conveniences such as air-conditioning and Jacuzzi tubs. Breakfast, which is included in the $90-to-$120 room rate, is well-prepared and substantial.

It seemed particularly substantial after an evening at the market, where, just being thorough, I tried tri-tip from all of the half-dozen vendors. The local barbecue specialty, it is a beef roast slowly cooked over local red oak. What I thought was the best stuff was cooked by SLO Brewing Co. (a restaurant and brewery). It was crusty on the outside but still juicy. It had a great smoky tang and the telltale ring of red that tells you the meat was cooked entirely over wood. SLO Brewing’s sandwich came on a particularly good crispy, garlicky roll, which had also been toasted over the fire.

You can find other kinds of barbecued meats as well, including smoked turkey legs, which seem to be favored mainly by big, burly bearded guys who walk and munch on them as if they were some kind of Brobdingnagian drumstick.

Not in the mood for barbecue? There’s everything from Filipino food to a quite good tamale stand. And for dessert, of course, there’s the wonderful fruit from the market.

Or, if you’re trying to maintain a high-calorie high, you can go over to Cold Stone Creamery, a local ice cream parlor that mixes its own flavors as you wait. They take a big portion of (unfortunately bland) vanilla ice cream, then chop it on a super-cooled slab and fold in the add-ons that you specify.

Understandably, the next morning we settled for only the first course of breakfast--local fruits with yogurt and a sprinkling of granola. Then we headed to Avila Valley Barn and Pickin Patch, a farm stand run by the Smith family at Pierce Canyon and Avila Beach roads. Most of the produce there is either grown by the family or comes from local farmers. At this time of year they have a particularly nice selection of apricots, including Pattersons, the odd Hungarian Rose (a tart ‘cot, but dead-ripe it has a particularly honeyed quality) and what they call the Kuz-Ma-Cot, an unknown variety they found in a friend’s yard. They also sell home-baked cobblers and pies.

If you follow the road a little farther, you wind up at Avila Beach, a gem of a harbor with a working fishing fleet. To whet your appetite for lunch, stop by the live seafood stand on the pier, where you can buy anything from sheepshead to half a dozen types of rock cod.

If you don’t have your own kitchen to cook the fish, walk out to the end of the pier and have lunch at the Olde Port Inn, where the downstairs floor is cut out beneath the glass-topped tables, giving a pelican’s-eye view of the water below. The clams in a buttery broth were intensely garlicky and the Dungeness crab salad was sweet, even if the crabs come from Alaska at this time of year. The Olde Port Inn also has a decent selection of local wines.

For a little less pricey lunch, stop at Louie’s on the Pier for chowder or fried fish.

Inspired by the market the previous night, on the spur of the moment we decided to drive 30 miles north to Paso Robles, where there is a Friday-night market. Unfortunately, this one isn’t much to write home about, but we did find the Adelaide Inn, a very nice, very affordable hotel (rooms $45 to $60) that managed to squeeze us in at the last minute.

And we found Bistro Laurent, which might be the best restaurant on the Central Coast. At the very least, it is the best-credentialed. Chef Laurent Grangien, who cooked in Los Angeles at Fennel, also has worked with three-star French chefs such as Michel Guerard and Michel Rostang.

He and maitre d’ Maureen Herrera have turned a brick-walled old building just off the town square (and across the street from the farmers market) into a truly fine dining restaurant, heavy on nouvelle cuisine-style cooking, in a little more than a year. The four-course, $28 tasting menu, which changes every night, is an amazing bargain.

Of particular notice is the wine list, which is a stunning assortment of great local wines--many of them quite scarce--and French wines. All are very fairly priced. There’s also a “finds” list that changes frequently. For our dinner, we had a bottle of 1982 Edna Valley Vineyards Pinot Noir, a nice wine I hadn’t seen in 15 years, that cost only $45. It won’t last much longer, but it is drinking well right now.

The next morning we set out early to make the Saturday-morning market in Templeton, a small town about five miles south of Paso Robles. It’s off the main highway, so you might never pass through it. In which case you’d not only be missing a swell farmers market, but one of the sweetest small towns on the Central Coast. The market starts at 9 a.m. Go early and stop at Templeton Donuts for some fresh-baked crullers beforehand.

Templeton also sits at the beginning of one of the great drives in the area. Take California 46 to Cambria and you’ll climb through rolling hills until you reach the escarpment where you catch a vista of the entire coast.

Parsons is a columnist for The Times’ Food section.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Budget for Two

Gas: $38.98

Picnic lunch: 31.13

Garden Street Inn, 1 night: 132.00

Farmers market dinner, including ice cream: 20.00

Adelaide Inn, 1 night: 65.40

Lunch, Olde Port Inn: 45.96

Dinner, Bistro Laurent: 126.71

FINAL TAB: $460.18

Garden Street Inn, 1212 Garden St., San Luis Obispo; tel. (805) 545-9802. Adelaide Inn, 1215 Ysabel Ave., Paso Robles; tel. (805) 238-2770.