Dish

Cherry Garcia Lives!
The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia may have died, but the Ben & Jerry's ice cream flavor named in his honor -- Cherry Garcia -- lives on. According to Brian Gaines, who owns the two Ben & Jerry's outlets in the city (one in North Beach, the other in the Haight), there are no plans to change anything about Cherry Garcia. "We think it's a tribute to him as it is," Gaines says of the cherry-flavored ice cream with its Bing cherries and chunks of chocolate.

Consumers seem to think so, too. In the wake of Garcia's death, Cherry Garcia rocketed to the top of the best-selling heap at the B&J scoop shop in the Haight -- an ascent Gaines describes as "absolutely incredible."

"We had anywhere from 50 to 500 people holding vigil around the store," Gaines says. Presumably a lot of them honored their fallen icon by noshing on the ice cream named for him; or maybe they just wanted ice cream. Because a lot of Deadheads have entered their waistline-conscious middle years, Ben & Jerry's now offers Cherry Garcia as frozen yogurt, too.

Market Place
For the past two weeks the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market has been operating on Tuesdays, too -- next to the Hyatt Regency. The additional day is an experiment that runs through Nov. 21 (when the temporary permits expire), but it's also a step in the direction of turning the market into a permanent, seven-days-a-week fixture on the Embarcadero.

According to Tom Sargent, president of the board of the S.F. Public Market Collaborative, the market is looking for a permanent site, either within a refurbished Ferry Building or in a yet-to-be-built structure on the west side of the Embarcadero, on land now owned by CalTrans. Sargent envisions something like Seattle's Pike Place Market, and he points out that there's a "historical precedent" for locating a public market near the Ferry Building, an area that used to be the city's market district. Sargent sees such a market as more than a commercial venture; he hopes to "create a center for educating people about the value of locally grown, seasonal food" and "to provide a forum for important food and agricultural issues," such as the need for sustainable agriculture and the imple-mentation of national standards for organic food products.

The public market would be a joint venture between a nonprofit corporation and either the city's port or redevelopment authorities. Sargent hopes to see the project begin in the spring of 1997. Getting approval from the city is a "complicated process," Sargent concedes, but "we've built a customer base." That might have been the hardest job of all.

By Paul Reidinger