Four in the morning: what really happens at the Zürcher Engrosmarkt
Michele could order online. He doesn't. What ten years among the stalls has built cannot be delivered.
Michele Metz
At four in the morning the Zürcher Engrosmarkt is already awake. The lorries have been there an hour, the halls are lit, and anyone arriving now sees the produce before it is distributed.
Our kitchen sits in the middle of it. That is not a detail about our address. It is the reason the food tastes the way it does.
Why we don't order
An order is a list. You write down what you think you need and receive whatever is available. Between the writing and the delivery there are a few days in which nobody looks at the produce.
At the market it runs the other way round. You see what is good today first, and write the menu from that. The fennel that looks particularly good this morning is on the plate this evening. Anything that doesn't convince never comes with us at all.
It sounds like a small difference. Over ten years it is the biggest one we have.
What ten years with the same traders means
At the start you are one customer among many. After a few years you know the names. After ten years somebody shows you a crate before it reaches the stall, because he knows you will take it.
That is not something you can buy and it appears in no catalogue. It exists only because you turn up every morning, including on the days when you need very little.
Our vegetable supplier has the address next door, Aargauerstrasse 1B. Between his hall and our kitchen there are a few steps.
The produce that never reaches the shops
A shop needs fruit that survives three days of logistics. A kitchen cooking tonight needs fruit that is perfect tonight.
Those are not the same fruit.
What is too ripe for retail, too small a quantity for a pallet, or too irregular for the standard often never goes on sale at all. For us it is exactly right. Apricots at their peak, tomatoes that cannot travel, half a case of strawberries that has to go today.
That is precisely where the best courses come from.
How a menu comes together at a stall
Sometimes the menu is fixed beforehand, because a guest has asked for something. More often it is the other way round.
You walk through the halls, see three things that belong together, and there is the course. The blueberries next to the young spinach, and the risotto that follows. Fennel with orange and grapefruit. Valais apricots, caramelised with honey and walnuts.
No chef writes a menu like that at a desk. It comes together between two stalls, at quarter past four.
And afterwards
By seven the buying is done, by eight the kitchen is running, and in the evening what is on your table is what Michele held in his hand that same morning.
In that order, not the other way round.