Big City Produce
Supermarket produce sections all tend to look alike. Red delicious apples, iceberg lettuce, and the other homogeneously safe products of corporate agriculture lend a certain sameness to Safeway and Fred’s. Specialty fruit and vegetable sellers provide more choice, importing exotic out-of-season items like strawberries at Christmas or establishing exclusive pipelines to local growers for just-picked baby lettuce, but for that you pay a price. Big City Produce strikes a happy balance. All of your favorites are there, from apples to zucchini, but you can also find fresh cactus, daikon radishes, and collard greens.
Produce buyer Hugh Gray, a long-time veteran of the greenmarket business, knows how to ferret out the best deals from the big fruit and vegetable wholesalers. He’s also cultivated relationships with local growers and a few small importers, like the guy who drives a truck up from Mexico with that cactus. Gray also knows that most supermarket produce is overpriced. At Big City, apples and bananas are almost always two pounds for a dollar, and during their short season, cherries from just up the Columbia River are probably cheaper here than any place else in town.
Big City doesn’t just sell produce for less. The store provides a much-needed source of fresh food in a neighborhood that the big supermarkets avoid. And it’s not just the long-time African-American residents that benefit from access to greens and okra. Growing Latino, Southeast Asian, and East Indian populations all come by to stock up on the basic ingredients of their cultural cuisine.
Gray and his partner Michael Callahan welcome the diversity, and they’re making an effort to enhance the community in other ways as well. They recently spearheaded the effort to transform the vacant lot next door into a neighborhood greenspace. The neighbors seem to appreciate it. Hugh Gray says that Big City Produce is the only place he’s ever worked where people come in and thank him for “just being here.”
Big City Produce, 5128 N Albina, Portland, Oregon, (503) 460-3830