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Union Market - Public Market on 5th Street and Neal Place NE in Brentwood


sheldman

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District Fishwife is still in my top three fish markets, (the other two being Black Salt and MediterraFish) in the metro area. Fiona does a great job at Fishwife. Just come earlier in the day because they tend to run out of the popular fish after 3pm. Also price wise, it is the same ballpark as the others for that quality of fish. 

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The District Fishwife. It's fantastic. It really is. But it comes at a price. A price, to be honest, I'm willing to pay. There are virtually no good fishmongers in this city. Yeah you can get good stuff at a few places, but you have to know you're stuff, and its a lot of luck. Her stuff is always great, and fresh. 

That's right, I remember now. I really need to get there soon, and let what's there dictate my dinner menu ASAP.

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Peregrine is always my first stop, and I either get a drip coffee or a made to order brew. During summer, nothing better than a frozen grapefruit daiquiri at Suburbia. Lately, I've been hitting the Thip Khao pop up for a curry noodle fix, but the DC Dosa stand is also outstanding. But street food is sometimes too carby, and Rappahannock still has great, clean seafood. Or if I don't want high brow style, head to District Fishwife's instead for home cooking with simple ingredients. Harvey's, Trickling Springs, and Honeycomb provide the staples. Still love Righteous Cheese and Buffalo & Bergen, with Neopol. Still very relevant destination/community for this guy.

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Agree with DaRiv18. I'm at Union Market at least once or twice a week. I'll get my fish at Fishwife, meat at Harvey's or Red Apron depending on what looks best, and other staples at Honeycomb. I only wish they had somebody selling decent produce. 

It is downright creepy on Monday evenings. That's not a criticism; just an observation (it is, after all, closed on Mondays).

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Having recently relocated to the DC area, I finally made a stop at Union Market last week and was pretty pleased with the place. We picked up a couple DC Empanadas and some fresh juice and wandered around, overwhelmed at what to try next. A cocktail with fresh herbs and strawberries at Buffalo & Bergen capped off the trip. Overall, Union Market lives up to the hype, but I'm not anticipating finding any really good deals there. It seems to serve its purpose as a place to sample whatever is trendy in DC at the moment.

Also wandered around the block to check out Angelika's Pop-up, which is a temporary movie theatre housing a bar and offering "gourmet snacks" in a warehouse that I still can't really wrap my head around. According to the man working in there, a permanent fixture will be opening adjacent to Union Market "in the next couple years." He said that Angelika's will continue to operate until the permanent theatre opens. It can be hard to find, but is located right next door to Dolcezza's Coffee Lab at 550 Penn.

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If the vendors at the Florida Avenue Market came here and became part of the community, I'm sure many people would get behind them.

We've been up and running for over ten years, and not one person has started a "Florida Avenue Market" thread, A. Litteri notwithstanding. Personally, I couldn't name a second tenant there.

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Toli Moli - We had some pork dumplings and chicken curry noodle soup.  Both are pretty good.  They only use dark meat so the chicken in the soup was quite tender and tasty.

Uzu - had a bowl of shoyu ramen.  I really like the texture of their noodles.  The soup seems a bit salty but within the acceptable range.  

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Trickling Springs today announced on their Facebook page that they would be shutting down “plant operations” in September 27, 2019. 

I am a loyalist, and to my eye they are doing very well in DC. Their ice cream was a crowd pleaser and very, very good. Their cow butter, goat butter, dark chocolate milk, buttermilk, and creamline milk are all high quality, distinctive products. They only sold grass-fed dairy and you could taste the sweetness. 

My kids literally grew up (and are still growing) on their milks and ic cream, and I always envisioned that I would buy my grandkids a cone someday.  

No announcement as to when the retail stores will close. 

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Wow that's a total surprise! Trickling Springs has been our ice cream and milk for many years. They've only been growing the past five years, it doesn't make sense from a business point of view. Must be a behind the scenes issue with the owners. 

Very sad to lose a local business that we use all the time. 

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1 hour ago, lion said:

Wow that's a total surprise! Trickling Springs has been our ice cream and milk for many years. They've only been growing the past five years, it doesn't make sense from a business point of view. Must be a behind the scenes issue with the owners. 

Very sad to lose a local business that we use all the time. 

This sucks, we got their milk regularly (but usually at WF), and ice cream at UM is treat our kids enjoyed at least a couple times a month.

However, there definitely is more going on here, and it doesn't exactly look to be above board.

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Just a head's up that the choices at Union Market have recently improved dramatically with the additions of outposts of Fava Pot, Indigo, and Lucky Buns, as well as Alex McCoy's Thai street food counter, Som Tam, and a new location of Laoban, a dumpling place with other locations (I haven't been) that recently brought onboard Tim Ma as "culinary director."  (Alas, Onwuachi's cheesesteak place is no more.)
 

Of these, I've only tried Indigo and Som Tam, both of which were very good.

Like everything else at Union Market, these aren't cheap lunches--everything is at least a dollar or two more than it should be (and would be in many other, lower-rent spots).  But at least now when I'm over there buying seafood from District Fishwife, I've got plenty of options for lunch, in addition to D.F itself, at which I'm partial to the Donburi bowls.

 

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i wanted to flag for people that the retail food options at Union Market remain open. Most of the market is shut off from the public, but one door is open, and District Fishwife, Harvey's Butcher, Almaala Farms, The Creamery, Cucina al Volo, and Vitus Wines are all open. Crowds when I have been (like today at 11:30 am) are basically non-existent.

Most, if not all, of those people are also doing delivery food via Mercato, which I have not tried, but which sounds like a good option. In talking to the owner of Harvey's, for example, he mentioned that you can specify what you want (2 lbs of chicken thighs) but then also specify how many pieces you want in the notes, or how you want a particular cut of meat to be cut. And they'll then follow those instructions. Harvey's will also shrink-wrap anything you like for freezing. 

Anyhow, they've been getting me through all of this, thought I'd pass the tip on to others. 

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Wanted to update this by letting folks know that I have now used Mercato to order food from Harvey's, District Fishwife, The Creamery, and Laoban Dumplings (they had actually just opened in Union Market before all of this went down). Everything worked well, particularly once I figured out how to use the system. Most things are very straightforward. For meat and fish you put in the number of lbs, but if what matters is the number of pieces, you can click "details" on each item, type what you want (I would like 2 NY Strips that combined weigh approximately this weight) and they'll give you the correct number of portions. Similarly, for Harvey's, you can order items that aren't on the website that they carry. For example, I got some sliced corned beef, and sliced swiss cheese which I know they carry, but which were not listed on the site. I just typed the request into the "details" line on one of my other items. 

 

Laoban Dumplings is selling frozen dumplings, but also other Asian market items, like fish sauce, soy sauce, etc. Also toilet paper. 

Anyhow, worked very well, all food was packaged well, and they set the delivery on our front porch and texted us when they did. Would recommend. 

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An update on Union Market shopping, as this continues to be an evolving issue, and there have been some hiccups along the way, but I believe everybody is trying to figure things out. 

1. If you have Mercato Green, they provide free deliveries on orders of over $35. You can sign up right now for a 14-day free trial of Mercato Green, and after that it's $9 per month. 

2. While initially all of Union Market was considered one vendor, that's evolved as apparently some vendors were running quite a bit behind schedule on putting together their orders. So right now District Fishwife and the Creamery can both be ordered under the "Union Market" hub, and orders of over $35 get free delivery. That's particularly useful for the Creamery, because often we may just want milk, and it's easier to hit $35 combined with the Fishwife. The Creamery also has cheese, yogurt, butter and eggs. 

3. If you're looking to push your order at the Fishwife over $35 you can throw in a bag of frozen shrimp, canned tuna or sardines, or a bottle of wine. 

4. If you want to be certain your order is correct, place your order online and then call the vendor directly. It's basically impossible to get in touch with Mercato, but I've had great luck placing my order, then calling Harvey's and specifying what it is I'm looking for. 

5. In my few attempts to do so I've had a lot of trouble scheduling a delivery from a regular grocery store, so Union Market has made things work for me in the interim, along with my CSA. Almaala Farms has a much smaller selection, but I've had good luck getting vegetables and some other items through them. 

I had basically not done grocery delivery before this whole thing, so I've been learning as I go. I hope this is useful. 

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20 minutes ago, Mark Dedrick said:

An update on Union Market shopping, as this continues to be an evolving issue, and there have been some hiccups along the way, but I believe everybody is trying to figure things out. 

1. If you have Mercato Green, they provide free deliveries on orders of over $35. You can sign up right now for a 14-day free trial of Mercato Green, and after that it's $9 per month. 

2. While initially all of Union Market was considered one vendor, that's evolved as apparently some vendors were running quite a bit behind schedule on putting together their orders. So right now District Fishwife and the Creamery can both be ordered under the "Union Market" hub, and orders of over $35 get free delivery. That's particularly useful for the Creamery, because often we may just want milk, and it's easier to hit $35 combined with the Fishwife. The Creamery also has cheese, yogurt, butter and eggs. 

3. If you're looking to push your order at the Fishwife over $35 you can throw in a bag of frozen shrimp, canned tuna or sardines, or a bottle of wine. 

4. If you want to be certain your order is correct, place your order online and then call the vendor directly. It's basically impossible to get in touch with Mercato, but I've had great luck placing my order, then calling Harvey's and specifying what it is I'm looking for. 

5. In my few attempts to do so I've had a lot of trouble scheduling a delivery from a regular grocery store, so Union Market has made things work for me in the interim, along with my CSA. Almaala Farms has a much smaller selection, but I've had good luck getting vegetables and some other items through them. 

I had basically not done grocery delivery before this whole thing, so I've been learning as I go. I hope this is useful. 

I ordered from fishwife and Harvey’s via Mercato a couple of weeks ago. At the end of the day it worked out fine but it was kind of strange that mercato treated it as two different orders and they arrived on different days. I don’t know if that’s changed at all since then. Quality of what was delivered was great as expected. 

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17 hours ago, Rhone1998 said:

I ordered from fishwife and Harvey’s via Mercato a couple of weeks ago. At the end of the day it worked out fine but it was kind of strange that mercato treated it as two different orders and they arrived on different days. I don’t know if that’s changed at all since then. Quality of what was delivered was great as expected. 

That's definitely still happening, and perhaps even more so than when they all first started doing this. Right now Fishwife, Teaism and the Creamery are treated as a single entity, and their orders should all arrive together. Harvey's, Al Volo, Laoban, Almaala Farms are all treated as their own individual entities. 

Mercato has a bit of an issue on deliveries as a result of this, as often drivers will show up to pick up say two orders from two separate entities (I had this happen with Almaala Farms and Fishwife). The driver will then pick up one of the orders, but check that they have picked both up. In the Mercato system that's then treated as both orders complete, and it's absolutely impossible to get anyone from Mercato to respond. 

In these circumstances I'd encourage people to call the vendor in question as soon as you notice a mistake. They can put in to have another driver pick it up, or, as happened in one instance for me this week, they can add your shipment into another shipment you have pending (that happened yesterday for me as a Fishwife order was just put in with a Harvey's order). 

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Flour seems to be more widely available these days, but wanted to let folks know that both District Fishwife and the Creamery at Union Market have started carrying it. Just bread flour for the Creamery, and bread, AP, and wheat flours at the Fishwife. 

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On 5/16/2020 at 8:38 PM, DaRiv18 said:

The Creamery also has started offering a no-commitment CSA share from Lancaster Fresh Farms Coop. Organic produce included kale, a variety of lettuce, squash, mushrooms, and cherry tomatoes. 

Oh, interesting, thanks for sharing. I'll check this out. 

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