Dur­ing my trip to Philly a cou­ple weeks ago, I took Sat­ur­day morn­ing for myself and did some­thing I always wanted to do – wan­der the Ital­ian Mar­ket dur­ing one of the busiest days.

Here in Orlando, our access to fresh spices, etc. is a bit lim­ited and we can get spices from the Fresh Mar­ket but it’s not the same. So that Sat­ur­day morn­ing, I went and wan­dered up and down 9th street. My main object of inter­est was the Spice stores. I had seen Ms. Patti Labelle pro­file them on her show Livin’ It Up and thought “I Must Must Must Go”. So, I parked the rental car on a side street, popped on my flats and went walking.

First thing I encoun­tered: Fantes. Yes – THE Fantes. Well, one of them any­wayz. I go to the web­site often but like my first expe­ri­ence with Sur La Table, I told the peo­ple – let me fon­dle, let me wan­der – I’ll find you for help – trust. And wan­der I did. Meowmix joked that only I could go to Philly and get excited over a pasta colan­der instead of shoes. I know, some of you are in shock but ever since I saw Nigella use one I thought “Wow – how handy”. And, it’s not found in Orlando. I found some rosette forms, fon­dled some pots, bought some gratin dishes (which the cranky sales­gal didn’t wrap very well and wound up break­ing – grrr) and a few other things. I was hop­ing to get my Global Cheese knife but they didn’t have it and it would have to be spe­cially ordered. I’ll just get it online.

Bonus: inside Fantes, they had a lit­tle cof­fee shop and some cafe au lait later I was back out and wan­der­ing the Ital­ian Mar­ket again on the hunt for the spices shops.

I found two spice shops, both of which were amaz­ing. One of which was the Spice Cor­ner and the other was the Ital­ian Mar­ket Spice Com­pany (their web­site isn’t up yet). There I bought so many spices my car smelled like a tangine. I bought curry, Nigella seeds, tar­ragon, rose­mary, ancho chile pow­der, tumeric, and a host of other stuff that was so fra­grant and fresh. I even found Pump­kin Spice Coffee.

I wan­dered in some of the shops on the side, mar­veled at the fresh pro­duce lin­ing the streets and just breathed in the sights and smells. I went into one of the butcher shops, Orlando’s Meats (hey – it said Orlando – I had to pay homage, no?). It was in there that I spied The Philadel­phia Ital­ian Mar­ket Cook­book for sale. This was some­thing I could take home with no prob­lem from the air­line. Also, before you shoot me for going to the butcher, here in Orlando we have Pub­lix, Fresh Mar­ket and yeah – that’s about it. *sigh* You don’t know how I wanted to shake some of the peo­ple whin­ing in line to say “Be thank­ful you have such a resource. You’d be eat­ing some funky chicken if you were in Orlando” (Have you EVER had Winn Dixie poul­try :::shud­der:::) The man­ager of the butcher shop gave me an auto­graphed copy that I’ve been read­ing with amaze­ment. For an Irish/Indian gal, I swear I must have been Ital­ian in another life­time because it just is a fas­ci­nat­ing read.

After brows­ing some other shops, I left, vow­ing to go back again. And this time – I’ll bring a list and ship every­thing home via mail.