When I first moved to Philadelphia, my world was small. I lived at one end of Center City and worked on the other end, a distance that spanned about 13 blocks on the same street. I didn’t have a car and didn’t know much about how Septa worked outside of my small downtown bubble.

In those days, I shopped at Reading Terminal Market because it was within walking distance from my apartment and I could get everything there that I needed for a week’s worth of meals.  However, I had never shopped at a place like it before.  Growing up in Portland, OR we stuck mostly to grocery stores, with an occasional stop at a Farmer’s Market.

I was also drawn to the Market because of how it was different from what I had known.  It was foreign to me in a way that made it feel magical.  I loved that my sandwich meats got wrapped in paper and that when I bought a slab of salmon it was plucked out of the case and deposited in a plastic bag.  I had never experienced meat, poultry or fish that wasn’t stamped with a “sell by” date and pre-packaged in styreofoam and shrink wrap.

During that first year, every couple of months my cousins Winnie and David would call early on a Saturday morning and tell me to meet them at the Market in an hour.  We’d have breakfast at the Down Home Diner or the Dutch Eating Place and then we’d wander.  David wouldn’t last long before finding a seat, but Winnie and I would walk every aisle.  She’d stop at a counter and ask me if I’d tried this Amish specialty or that exotic piece of fruit.  Whether the answer was yes or now, she’d call someone over and buy whatever it was that she’d spotted, enough for both of us to take some home.

Why do you shop at Reading Terminal?