Best Farmers Market: Old Town Scottsdale Farmers Market
3806 North Brown Avenue, Scottsdale
This Saturday farmers market — which bustles at Brown Avenue and First Street, walkable from the nearby brunch nexus — offers some of everything. In the tight arrangement of stands, you will find a slew of prepared-food vendors peddling food from salsa to barbecue brisket to Syrian desserts. The Valley's very best farms, like Blue Sky Organic Farms and McClendon Select, take up ample real estate here. More interesting still may be a few of the smaller stands, like Brother Nature Farms, where you can find rare heirloom tomatoes, wonky herbs, and specialty lettuces.
Best Asian Market: Asiana Market
1116 South Dobson Road, Mesa
The newest location of this Korean supermarket is a foodie paradise. Located in the Dobson Plaza in Mesa, the newly expanded Asiana Market boasts an extensive selection of Korean prepared foods, a large seafood department, and a food court that's a worthy destination all on its own. The market is easy to navigate, thanks to wide, well-organized aisles stocked with specialty food items from across Asia. Come hungry: The food court is home to a location of Paik's Noodles, a popular Chinese-Korean chain noodle shop, along with metro Phoenix's first location of Tous Les Jours, a popular French-Asian bakery cafe chain.
Fritters soaked in flavored syrup from Caspian Food Market
Chris Malloy
17040 North Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale
Craving zolobia bamie, date-shaped fritters that collapse with a syrupy rush? How about rose water and saffron ice cream that will assail your brain with creamy refreshment and a world of floral flavors? Or maybe you're hankering for baba ghanoush tufted with yogurt and mint, or Bulgarian feta, or flatbread peeled out of a domed oven and into your bag, ready to be dipped into deeply creamy hummus? Caspian Food Market in north Scottsdale specializes in Persian food and generalizes in the foods of the Middle East and slightly beyond. Prepared foods here are great.
Best Meat Market: The Meat Market
37636 North Tom Darlington Drive, Carefree
There are a number of butcher shops in town that offer custom cuts from animals raised with care. At The Meat Market in Carefree, you can score rarities like lamb neck and oyster steak. The butchers at this 827-square-foot shop slice everything by hand. Though the whole-animal butchery and many cuts of meat impress, prepared foods are what give The Meat Market its edge. The Meat Market just released charcuterie, an ambitious program that includes hot Calabrese salami and guanciale (pork cheek). But nothing beats this rising spot's chicken liver mousse, powered with three kinds of booze and topped with liquid chicken fat.
Best Fish Market: Nelson's Meat + Fish
2415 East Indian School Road
The fish case at Nelson's is one of the true marvels of the metro Phoenix food scene. Sometimes, the marine creatures inside are so rare and fresh they look lifted from science fiction. Big-lipped golden tilefish. Purple-veined Spanish mackerel roe. Chain-mailed sardines from Greece, dead eyes looking alive. Chris Nelson only flies in fish overnight. He has impeccable sources that hook him up with products that are mesmerizing. This is where to go when you want to cook seafood for someone you love, or to taste for yourself the glories of a scallop that was resting on a Massachusetts seabed yesterday.
Best Bakery: Lior the Baker
10953 North Frank Lloyd Wright Boulevard, Scottsdale
On Fridays, Lior and Lily Ben-Shushan bake Moroccan bread coated with dark green za'atar like meadows covered in grass. Fluffy, rich with a buttery heft, this bread has the robustness of a stellar, hardly credible baked good — and a flavor like the smell of a garden, out there with your feet in the dirt and your nose in tomato plants. Almond croissants will have you seeing visions of cobblestone streets in European cities like Paris or Rome. Rugelach and challah come in many flavors, babka comes in chocolate and halva versions, and the hardest thing you have to do in a week when you stop into this bakery, by far, is to choose what to buy.
Best Gluten-Free Bakery: sweetDee's Bakeshop
7350 East Stetson Drive, Suite C101, Scottsdale
We're living in a golden age of gluten-free baking, and the latest reason to cheer is sweetDee's Bakeshop, a newcomer to Old Town Scottsdale. Not everything in the shop is cleared for the GF crowd, but there are a number of GF goodies to choose from, like fat brownies iced with cappuccino cream cheese frosting, lemon bars topped with perfectly toasted marshmallows, mini doughnuts (glazed and unglazed), several types of cookies, an out-of-this world vanilla Fruity Pebbles cheesecake, and more. The lineup changes constantly, so we recommend visiting often to see what owner Danielle O'Day has dreamed up.
Best Candy Store: Sweeties Candy of Arizona
1050 West Chandler Boulevard, Chandler
Our dentist told us to stay away, but we'll never give up our visits to Sweeties, which bills itself as Arizona's largest candy store. Our inner child goes positively berserk as we wander the brightly lit store that carries virtually everything you could want: retro sweets such as circus peanuts and Necco wafers; today's favorites, like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Kit Kats; hard-to-find flavors; bulk candy bins; and obscure brands that run the gamut from Abba-Zaba to Zotz. And in case you need more indulgences, there's gum, dozens of soda flavors, savory snacks, frozen treats, and toys.
