I was sitting at the counter of Hershels East Side Deli Saturday afternoon, chatting with owner Steve Safron about food, basketball and graduate education at St. Joe’s, when Betty Buffett dropped onto the stool one over from me. She looked up at Steve and asked, “Do you have a small diet coke? Just a small one.”

He looked at her, smiled and nodded.  By this point, Betty’s son Neil was sitting next to her, and he held up two fingers, to indicate that he also wanted a soda.  Steve came back with their drinks, and we continued chatting, until Betty requested a slice of lemon for her soda.  Just as he returned with it, he was called away again, this time by one of his employees.

Betty turned her gaze on me, took in the fact that I was taking notes, and asked me what I was doing.  I explained the project and I didn’t even have to ask her what she thought before she started to tell me how much she loved the market.  She said that it reminded her of the Bird-in-Hand market in Lancaster County, a place she’s always enjoyed visiting because of the Amish vendors.

Betty lives in Lake Placid, NY and Neil is a PhD student at SUNY Stony Brook.  That morning had been the first time in 20 years that she had been to the market.  She was astounded by how much it had changed.  For breakfast, they waited in line for counter seats at the Dutch Eating Place.  Betty tried the scrapple and liked it fairly well, although she did admit that she ate it with a healthy serving of ketchup.  Neil shook his head at the memory and confessed that he had stuck with the turkey bacon.

Neil said that since he goes to school on Long Island there really isn’t anything like Reading Terminal around him.  He can go into the city for a similar experience, but he believes that places like the market are strictly “an urban phenomenon.”

By this point they had finished their drinks and needed to get going.  Earlier in the day they had gone to the Franklin Institute to see the King Tut exhibit and were now on their way to the Archeology Museum at Penn in order to check out the companion exhibit there.  I gave them easy directions on how to get to Penn and we said goodbye.

It was a pleasure to talk to two people who were so enthusiastic about their visit to Philadelphia, and the market specifically.