Finding Farmers' Markets - Newport Beach, CA

This post is part of a series Much Ado About Fooding is doing on farmers' markets - Duc and I plan to visit as many as we can, starting in southern California, to get a sense of what sets each apart, what drives communities to them, and what gems people should look out for. To keep track, bookmark the "Farmers' Market" category.

They say, "It takes a village." I wonder if they could also mean it takes a [Lido Marina] village to raise a healthy child. We ventured out to Newport Beach to see what their Sunday farmers' market was like (held 9am-1pm) and were surprised to see such a short street of few tents in the quaint area. The signs were plentiful on the way into the area, adorning street medians and showing where exactly visitors could park. Banners proclaiming it to be a Certified Farmers' Market waved proudly in the morning breeze, and the perk of getting parking validated for free with purchase made the parking structure seem less daunting. We weren't expecting to find such a small farmers' market in Newport Beach but I suppose we also did not know what to expect. This one certainly goes to show that quantity does not trump quality whatsoever.



The initial way that we knew we were at the right place aside from all of the street signs was the Soho Taco truck we saw parked at the entrance. Since we've been great fans of them since our first exposure two years ago, we recognized the location from all of the Instagram pictures we catch of them parked at the farmers' market. Unfortunately they were not open for business just yet when we arrived but we knew we would get lunch there later.

The farmers' market street itself is fairly short but if you ever have any issues, the information booth is quite prominent and the staff there extremely helpful. From the branding, I surmised that they are the same organization that puts on the farmers' market in Costa Mesa at the South Coast Collection; tell me if I'm mistaken please. Anyhow, though the number was small in terms of vendors present, I feel like the overseeing organization did a great job in ensuring that the variety was large. We saw a handful of produce stalls but also several artisan product providers as well. Keeping the different areas exclusive seems like a great business set-up though I wonder if visitors to this market ever feel pigeonholed into buying from the same vendor every time they need an item. After all, you can get just about all of your grocery list at this market but you get no price shopping perk.


The Newport Beach farmers' market has several sections and categorizations of vendors according to the website including the Certified Agriculture and Non-Certified Agriculture designations. We were happy to see just about every booth we met in the certified section and were also happy to see some of the best of the best such as Da-Le Ranch, Sola Foods, and Future Food Farms. One part that might be surprising to anyone visiting the Newport Beach farmers' market is that the second half of the short street is dedicated to fashion, arts, and crafts. Don't be surprised to see a teal trailer parked with bright, eccentric accessories by any means. It's normal at this market.


The areas where we definitely were stopped up included the sea salt booth (we tried the scorpion salt too), the Bee Ladies' honey booth, and the One Love Tea tea stand. It's hard not to purchase these when you can sample any of the products. All in all, a short and brief market that can take you from 30 minutes to an hour to explore (if not less) but with plenty of variety in the type of food/groceries you can find.

Photography by Duc Duong. More pictures available on Facebook here.

This post is part of a series Much Ado About Fooding is doing on farmers' markets - Duc and I plan to visit as many as we can, starting in southern California, to get a sense of what sets each apart, what drives communities to them, and what gems people should look out for. To keep track, bookmark the "Farmers' Market" category.