North Market

One of my favorite places to go when I'm home is the North Market. I'm jealous my mom and dad get to go all the time. It's a big warehouse-type building that's bustling with food vendors of all sorts - bakeries, seafood and butcher shops, ice cream, a wine and beer shop, sushi, Indian food, Mediterranean food...I could go on. I'll just talk about a couple of my favorite places

I mentioned Jeni's in my post yesterday. It's an artisanal ice cream company that has a few locations in Columbus, including the North Market. Their philosophy which they write about on the website is "Ohio Love You" - they use local Ohio ingredients, dairy from grass-fed cows, and focus on what's in season to make their seasonal flavors.




You can see some of the flavors on their menu board - Belgian milk chocolate, black coffee, lemon yo, blackstrap praline, wildberry lavender...mmm. Salty caramel is kind of their flagship flavor, and it's delicious. Their ice creams are very high quality and the flavors are so innovative. They also use a few of their flavors in ice cream sandwiches which are made with macaron cookies. At our wedding last September instead of wedding cake we served 2 kinds of their ice cream sandwiches - salty caramel, which are rolled in chopped almonds (pictured below), and strawberry buttermilk (a summer flavor).




I highly recommend ordering some Jeni's ice cream online if you're not in Columbus - you can order 4 or 6 pints and choose your own flavors, and they also have a couple pre-set flavor packages available. It would make a great gift for someone...or yourself. :)


Omega Bakery is another great spot in the market, they make artisanal breads and other goodies. Sometimes they have pretzel bread or rolls which are amazing. They also have some sweet things in a refrigerated case, but this bakery is mostly about the bread.




And lastly, there's Taste of Belgium. They have these little Belgian waffles that are really more dessert than breakfast, you can buy a bag of four of them and they recommend toasting them. They have a light sugary sticky coating on them. I bet they would be really good with a scoop of Jeni's ice cream on top... And recently they started making crepes too. If i hadn't just eaten an ice cream sandwich I would have tried one. Next time.