First Maxwell St Market Trip of the Season

Today, with the glorious weather, and the beaming sun, I made my way to New Maxwell St with a visiting cousin. Some new stalls, some old favorites. On the newly configured south end of the market we saw immense gorditas de requeson being fried to order. Manolo and Rubi in their north of Roosevelt slots were in fine form - for the first time (did they always have it) I had a fresh taco al pastor, shaved from a pineapple topped spit to order onto a freshly griddles taco-sized tortilla with cebolla cilantro and a shpritz of red salsa. As I walked away and took a bite, this taco stopped me in my tracks - crisp porky edges on rich juiscy slivers of meat, warm crusty masa, clean onion and cilantro - so good. I nearly collapsed. I nearly exploded. It was breakfast # four of the market - after two quesadillas, an empanada de rice pudding, a taco de carne asada and half a mild oaxacan tamal, it was all I could do to choke down an unfilled fresh churro on the way back to the car. Looking forward to going back for more al pastor from Manolo (or was is Rubi) as well as the gorditas de requeson, and springing for a 6 pounds of strawberries for seven bucks which for some reason I couldn't convince myself to buy today.

Seth,

I drove along Canal last night on the way to a mediocre dinner at Moon Palace, and was surprised that so little of the street was torn up. Last time I went (around early Feb, I think), I was so bummed by the number of places that were closed due to construction, that I haven't been back is over two months (!)

To the best of my knowledge, and quite counter-intuitively, Manolo's is run by the sister (and features the Masa Madonna) and Rubi's is run by the brother.

I've been very happy with large produce purchase about 80% of the time -- if you do get the berries or other bulky fresh items, consider pulling up right in front and loading the stuff in (rather than carrying it out of the market by hand...but you probably already knew that).

Hammond

Crazy...I was there too, and had a taco al pastor at Rubi's.
What a great, sunny day to be at Maxwell Street.
The pupusa stand was in fine form as well.
And I got a pretty cool Mucha Lucha t-shirt.

Anyone have any new/updated links to explain more about Maxwell Street? I'd like to find out more about food available, types of stuff for sale (food & stuff in general) and maybe some ideas either on parking or CTA tips on getting there. Thanks in advance.

It's in the threads. The stands move around from week to week, and any given stand may not be there any given week, so you just have to go and look for what you find. Same goes for merchandise, basically-- certain things are always there, otherwise, it's totally random like any flea market.

As far as parking goes, you can try to park for free a ways west of there and walk several blocks, but I usually drive down the street west of Canal, other side of the Dominick's, to where guys run a parking lot for $3. That's close and reasonably cheap.

Seth Zurer wrote:Today, with the glorious weather, and the beaming sun, I made my way to New Maxwell St with a visiting cousin.

Not quite glorious weather yet, soon, very soon.

Maxwell Street