A Coconut Grove Cornucopia

November 7, 9:28 PMMiami Food and Drink ExaminerRosalie E. Leposky

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Coconut Grove Farmers’
Market © Rosalie E. Leposky

 Each Saturday, as if sprouting from the earth, a raw and organic foods market springs to life at the corner of Grand Avenue and Margaret Street in Miami’s Coconut Grove section. It’s the Coconut Grove Farmers’ Market at 3300 Grand Ave., a weekly tradition for seekers of prepared raw vegan and certified organic food.

Some of the market’s patrons walk there, but most come greater distances – from as far away as the Florida Keys, the Palm Beaches, and even the Tampa Bay area. Many regulars are cancer survivors who credit a “natural” diet for their survival.

Over the years, I’ve met market visitors from all over the world. Tourists from elsewhere in the U.S. come to learn more about products they buy in their home towns, and to stock up on provisions for their travels. I’ve even met growers from Hawaii and Costa Rica who were visiting in Miami and came by to see how the market’s proprietor, Stan Glaser, was selling products.

Glaser also owns and operates Glaser Organic Farms in the Redland, a rural district 18 miles southwest of Miami. In addition to the market, he sells his products at the farm, online, and in select stores around the United States.

 Early on Saturday mornings, Glaser drives several truckloads of certified organic foods and some traditional items up to Coconut Grove, unfurls and erects several large tents beneath a canopy of live oak trees, and sets out his merchandise. The tents protect diners, shoppers, and produce from Florida’s intense sun and rainstorms on one the Grove’s few remaining vacant lots. Next to Glaser’s tents, a variety of other shops under their own tents offer clothing, jewelry, prepared raw foods, and organic fruit and vegetables. The market opens for business around 11 AM and closes at dusk.

Stan Glaser ©
Rosalie E. Leposky

Glaser trained as an architect and city planner. After serving in the Peace Corps, he traveled around the world for five years, and in his journeys discovered vegetarianism and raw foods.

“I had been building buildings for people to use without understanding the basics of life,” he says. “We can live without clothing or buildings, but we need food. I started ordering food for myself, and enough extra to sell. That was the genesis of the Farmers’ Market in 1978.”

Today the market is much larger and more complex, offering about 500 individual items. Tracy Fleming, Glaser Farms’ executive raw-foods chef, makes many of them in her kitchen. Among her favorite food products is the coconut ice cream she prepares with local coconuts. “Today, everyone likes to eat locally grown foods,” she says. “I enjoy discovering the beauty, sensuality, flavor, and texture of each ingredient we grow, and combining them into luscious and satisfying foods.

Under the tents

Beneath the canvas, friendly shoppers chat and trade cooking hints while moving carefully around each other. Space in the narrow aisles is tight and normal physical space is circumscribed, so everyone has to be polite and respectful.

Coconut cashew vanilla ice cream
with strawberry sauce
 © Rosalie E. Leposky

 The back tent features potatoes, onions, large squashes, bananas, citrus, mangos, avocados, and other tropical fruits. In the center of this tent are packages of small items, including beans, dried fruits, grains, seaweed, spices, and packages of Chef Fleming’s breads, dried nibbles, and sweets – items such as almond sesame halvah, chocolate fudge brownies, raw Essen flat breads, raw nori crackers, dried fruit rawies, and two kinds of temple balls.

The long main tent along Grand Avenue is divided into two areas. At tables and benches close to Margaret Street, customers dine on Chef Fleming’s vegan raw foods, salads, and cakes such as banana chocolate tiramisu, raw pineapple carrot cake, and strawberry shortcake – all sold by the ounce. Raw vegan nut-milk ice cream flavors include banana walnut, chocolate mousse, coconut cashew vanilla, maple pecan, and strawberry macadamia, with a variety of toppings.

Salads come in prepared packages, or you can make your own. Adjoining the salads are coolers with organic juices prepared by the Glaser Farms staff, including many kinds of lemonade and citrus drinks, grape juices, and watermelon.

The other side of the long main tent contains mostly certified organic produce, with a small selection of conventional produce. The items available vary from week to week, but organic offerings typically include domestic vegetables such as celery, peppers, tomatoes, many kinds of greens (including lettuce, mustard greens, and spinach), seasonal fruits and vegetables, smaller squashes, cucumbers, many kinds of mushrooms. Also present are Asian, Mexican, and other Latin American favorites.

Florida law requires that farmers’ markets meet the same standards as regular stores, including a sink with hot running water for staff members. In 2007, state inspectors threatened to close down the Coconut Grove Farmers’ Market because it lacked such a sink.  Glaser wasn’t able to find  a stand-alone sink that met the requirements, so he invented one. Look for it behind where the nori rolls are made.

Other activities 

Chef Tracy Fleming teaches several raw-food cooking classes a year at Glaser Organic Farms, 19100 SW 137th Ave., 305-238-7747. The schedule is available online; advance registration by phone is required.

If you live too far away to shop at the Coconut Grove Farmers’ Market, you can order Glaser Organic Farms products by phone or online. The complete catalog is available online. UPS trucks make daily pickups at the farm.