Food
The Original Farmers Market at Third and Fairfax
Open since 1934, the market at Third and Fairfax survived the mall that grew up beside it. Here is what it is and how to use it.
At the corner of Third and Fairfax there is a low, sprawling, green-and-white market that has been operating since 1934. It is called the Original Farmers Market, it is not really a farmers market in the modern sense, and it is one of the most durable public spaces in Los Angeles.
What it actually is
The market began during the Depression as a place where farmers sold produce from their trucks on an empty field. What it became is a permanent covered market of small food stalls, counters and shops, most of them independently operated, many of them decades old, arranged around communal tables under an open roof.
The important structural fact is that it is a collection of small businesses rather than a single restaurant or a food hall assembled by a developer. Several of the stalls have been run by the same families across generations. That is what makes it feel different from the newer food halls it superficially resembles, and it is why the food halls keep trying to imitate it.
The mall next door
In the early 2000s, a large open-air shopping centre, The Grove, was built directly adjacent, connected by a trolley. This was widely expected to destroy the market, and it did not.
What happened instead is more interesting: the two coexist, sharing foot traffic, with completely different characters about twenty metres apart. The market kept its stalls, its tables and its regulars. The shopping centre brought volume. Whether the market is better or worse for the neighbour is a conversation people here will happily have at length.
For a visitor, the practical consequence is that you can park once and experience two entirely different versions of Los Angeles retail without moving your car.
How to use it
The market rewards a specific approach: do not decide what you want before you walk the whole thing.
Everything is counter service, and the seating is communal and shared across stalls. That means a group can eat completely different things from completely different vendors at the same table, which is the market's actual superpower and the reason it works for a group that cannot agree.
Go on a weekday morning if you want to understand why people love it. Weekends are busy and fun and the tables are hard to get. Weekday mornings are when the regulars are there with a newspaper and a coffee, which is closer to what the place is.
Cash is not required everywhere but is worth having.
Parking
There is a parking structure serving the market and the adjacent shopping centre, with validation arrangements that vary. Check current terms rather than assuming, because they change and the difference is not trivial on a long visit.
Street parking in the surrounding residential blocks is heavily permit-restricted and enforced. Read the signs properly. Los Angeles parking signage is famously stacked three deep and it means what it says.
Why it matters
Los Angeles is not short of food. It is short of unprogrammed public space where people who did not arrive together end up sitting near each other. The market's communal tables, under a roof, in the open air, with no admission and no requirement to buy anything in particular, do a job that almost nothing else in the city does.
That is the reason to go, more than any individual stall. Though the individual stalls are good, and you should walk the whole thing before you choose.
About the author
Priya Raghunathan
Priya Raghunathan writes about culture and sport for Los Angeles Monday: film and music, the restaurants feeding the city, and the teams and venues carrying it through the week.