One of the reasons Seattle has become such a great food community is its abundance of raw materials: seafood, mushrooms, fruit, clean water. Add to that the hardworking farmers, fishermen and foragers, and the well-established networks for getting the ingredients of their goodness into the hands of buyers. In short: we've become a city of great marketplaces.

We'll look at traditional, small-scale farmers' markets in upcoming issues. For a start, though, a stroll through three of Seattle's biggest and most colorful.

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-Uwajimaya-

One of the first things you notice at Uwajimaya: the wall of mushrooms. Names and shapes more or less familiar, trompette royale, hedgehog, wood ear, shiitake, maitake, shimeji, nameko.

Further afield: goat tripe. Big market for goat meat in many Asian and Latino communities; stands to reason there'd be customers for goat offal as well.

Westerners have long eaten lamb tongues and lamb kidneys, after all.

A genial gent named Darryl Neault runs the meat department. Twenty-five years ago he trained as a chef at South Seattle Community College, ended up as a manager for the Larry's Markets chain, which ceased operating last year. He and a staff of five meat-cutters are responsible for Uwajimaya's broad range of meat. At the top of the line: the all-natural beef from Painted Hills, a consortium of ecologically-minded ranchers based in Wheeler County, Oregon. On the shelves and in the cold-cases: oxtail, shanks and sort ribs. Boneless leg of lamb. Short ribs and short plate for sukiyaki ... lots of sukiyaki. Over in the fish department, Seattle's most varied selection of seafood in all its guises.

Live oysters, crab and lobsters. Sea urchins. Whole fish too numerous to count. Fish fillets, steaks, roasts. Fish sliced for sushi and sashimi. Steamed octopus, fish heads for stock.

Department manager Ken Hewitt grew up in a family fish market in West Seattle, then spent 15 years with Mutual Fish in Rainier Valley. He's been at Uwajimaya for the past seven, building on years of relationships with fishermen, fishing boats and vendors, overseeing a crew of 19 working two shifts. Everything is cut in-house: snapper, salmon, tilapia, yellowfin, yellowtail, sockeye, cod for kasuzuke marinade, mahi-mahi, Chilean sea bass, whole mackerel ... to say nothing of the shellfish and squid.

There's even a separate set of knives, cutting boards and sinks for kosher. A rabbi from Seattle's Va'ad HaRabinim inspects regularly; the Kashruth certificate is posted on the wall.

When Salumi wants branzino for its Sunday dinners, they call Ken. Lampreia calls. So does Shiro.

Photos by J. Cody Lucido

For all that, the niche for Japanese sashimi is big enough to keep three cutters busy full-time. And what glorious sashimi it is! The best otoro, the freshest snapper, yellowtail and sockeye. All packaged to delight the eye as well as the palate.

You'd think Uwajimaya would be top-of-the-line expensive, but it's not. It's now in three locations (Seattle, Bellevue and a store in suburban Portland), yet manages to maintain a vast inventory of unusual foodstuffs and middle-of-the-road pricing.

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-Whole Foods-

They started in Austin, Tex., in 1980 and have grown to become the world's largest retailer of what they call "natural and organic" food. One of their 191 stores is at the north edge of downtown Seattle, at Westlake and Denny, where it occupies almost 50,000 square feet and employs close to 200.

The produce is almost all organic, a bit more expensive of course, but worth it to the earnest patrons who view shopping at Whole Foods as socially responsible. Anna Dupuy and Brandon Jones will sell you wild salmon and veal osso buco. Twenty feet of counter space are devoted to cheese: Chevrot, Robiola di Bosca, Robiola Due Latte, Robiola Tre Latte. Taleggio. Camembert and real Brie. Goat cheeses like Selles-sur-Cher, Pentu l'Etang, Besace du Berger, Clacbitou, Chevre d'Or and Lingot du Quercy. Washed rind cheeses from Burgundy: Epoisses, Affidelice au Chablis, Ami du Chambertin. Then you turn around and see the giant display of Parmigiano-Reggiano, true Italian parmesan. Opposite the fish counter, there's a grill and a chef who will cook your purchase on the spot. Eat it there or take it home. Similarly, 20 stools at the counter of an Asian cafe, more seating at the Market Cafe. The spicy chicken with rice noodles makes a great snack. Several islands offer olives, prepared salads, salad-makings, cut fruit; a nearby atoll of steam tables presents cooked food like pastas and rice dishes. Desserts are sold by the pound.

Michael Pollan, the journalist who's become America's culinary conscience, feels Whole Foods has lost its bearings, that it's become industrial. Organic-industrial, perhaps, but losing touch with its roots as the store that moved "organic" off the hippie fringes and into the mainstream.

Whole Foods seems to be taking the criticism to heart. For example, local managers now buy directly from local farmers. In late February, Pollan and Whole Foods president John Mackey engaged in an extended public discussion about the future of organic food in the U.S. economy; the conversation is archived on the Whole Foods website.

It's a step in the right direction for those of us who care about the food that's on our dinner plate.

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-Pike Place Market-

About to celebrate its 100th anniversary, Seattle's iconic Pike Place Market nearly didn't make it to the age of 70. Its warren of stalls, shops and independent vendors didn't fit in with developers' plans for the neighborhood, and it was slated for demolition.

In France, at roughly the same time, that very fate befell Les Halles, the center-city market that Zola called "the belly of Paris." But in Seattle, the market that the painter Mark Tobey called "the soul of Seattle" survived, thanks to a campaign waged by the architect Victor Steinbrueck. (His son, City Councilman Peter Steinbrueck, is currently trying to make sure there's no rebuild of the Alaskan Way Viaduct.) The Market was placed under the watchful eye of a municipal Preservation and Development Authority, which sets policy for its permanent vendors, allocates space to a long roster of day vendors, and organizes social services for the several hundred people who live in the market's low-income housing.

Sol Amon, from his crowded perch overlooking Pure Food Fish, surveys a narrow but busy stall perhaps 200 steps from the Market's iconic Pig. It's not the seafood vendor where they fling the fish for TV cameras and gawking tourists, it's the one that's been in business for 45 years. Sol was named King of the Market a year ago, an honor that he takes in stride. One of his employees, Richard Hoague, has been standing at the front of the stall for the past 25 years, hawking live oysters, king salmon, enormous Alaskan scallops.

Over at Don and Joe's Meats, young Matt Kokorowski wraps up an order of lamb cheeks, lamb tongue and lamb kidneys. You can buy the traditional cut for a French onglet -- also called the hanging tender steak -- which doesn't make it to your neighborhood supermarket's meat counter since there's only one per animal.

One per. No chain stores here. Genzale Produce, Uli's Sausage, Chukar Cherries, Beecher's Handmade Cheese, Bavarian Meats.

Delicious City Editorial Director Ronald Holden at Pure Food Fish - Photos by J. Cody Lucido

Intermingled with the farmers are the artists, artisans and crafts people, offering tastes of honey and nuts, hawking T-shirts, hand-painted ceramics, scrimshaw, leather, jewelry, hand-printed postcards. Below street level are dozens of shops selling vintage posters, vintage clothing, vintage books. All this, of course, without a single Safeway or McDonald's. So, a na?ve visitor might wonder, how does the Market tolerate a Starbucks? Ah, but this is where Starbucks was conceived, born and nurtured! This is ground zero, this warm petri dish of supportive small businesses.

One cannot imagine Seattle today without the Pike Place Market at its core. Let the Space Needle serve as Seattle's symbol; the Market is its living, beating heart.

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