Local Flavor

A foodie's guide to flea market fare
A food writer's unique viewpoint on flea market dining and other noteworthy bargains and observations.

by Deb Barshafsky

You ever wake up at night and think, "Wouldn't some french fries be yummy right now?" The fried-to-perfection-malt-vinegar-soaked variety you eat at the fair out of a hot, greasy cone while you're strolling through the livestock exhibits and puffing great clouds of breath into the cold fall air? And you have to satisfy your craving with a few stale Lay's Salt and Vinegar chips because the fair is long gone and you have a spotty history of frying foods, including one particularly disastrous episode with potato latkes? Okay, so maybe that's just me.

Nonetheless, dear reader, I submit to you that a craving of this ilk is problematic and not easily appeased. Now, when I have a hankering for something doughy and deep fried, I'm in luck. While the fair comes to town but once a year, Augusta's bustling flea markets are open every weekend. And I know just the stand to acquire a rapturous funnel cake. As I'm not very adept at mixing food and rides (I recall an unsavory childhood experience that involved cotton candy and a giant twirling teacup), the flea market angle is a much better approach for me when I crave something that, truth be told, no self-respecting, health-conscious human being should be ingesting.

Ah, the flea market. A veritable feast of sights, scents, tastes and amusing hand-lettered signs. Here, next to an assortment of personal hygiene products: "Do Not Test Deodorant." And here, propped on a cage of birds: "Hand Raised Cochatiels." And by a box of mewling kittens, one for the too much information file - "The one that looks like a siamese is already taken but can't be picked up until 6 p.m. because the owner works with food."

Which brings me full circle, back to the central topic of our discourse - food. Scoff if you will, but in addition to 12 toothbrushes for a dollar, live chickens, old shoes, work gloves, essential oils, tube socks, vintage Tupperware, scented candles, cocker spaniel puppies, pirated CDs sold by an engaging Jamaican fellow ("Would I lie to ya, sistah?") and the most fabulously tacky lamps I've ever seen (dozens of them lined up like garishly festooned soldiers), the flea market also offers an amazing array of edible items. Some tempting (love those homemade chow-chows), some suspect ("Tell me again how you happened upon 30 cases of Dolly Madison Zingers?") and some downright scary (dusty, dented cans of Cattle Drive chili).

The South Augusta Flea Market is king of the swap meet, holding court on Highway 56 (aka Doug Barnard Parkway) for a quarter of a century. And just one mile south, dramatically juxtaposed on the opposite side of this busy byway, the young, brash upstart - Barnyard Flea Market. I ventured out to the markets on a recent afternoon to a.) look for bargains on Fire King, my beloved jadite dishes, and b.) compare the eats.

You don't have to look hard for something to nosh at the South Augusta Flea Market. The folks who run the place have strategically placed food booths at both entrances. Come in through the front, you're lured by hand-pulverized fresh lemonade (prepared with nothing short of gusto) and peanuts roasted before your eyes.

Enter through the side and you're enticed by the siren song of the funnel cake girls - a pair of blondes pouring batter into a giant vat of bubbling grease, producing delectable, doughy monoliths. Topped with your choice of cinnamon and powdered sugar ($2.50), chocolate syrup and whipped creamed ($3.50), or blueberries, strawberries, apples or peaches ($4.50). Can you think of a more deliciously decadent way to move one step closer to heart disease?

Healthier options abound here too, with produce vendors sprinkled throughout the market proper and the dirt and gravel parking lot. A battered truck bed of grapefruit under a bright blue canopy, a table of pie plates holding pyramids of polished tangerines, a tower of cardboard boxes full of sweet potatoes and the expansive produce stand operated by Lester "Hog Wild" Johnson - his rusty shopping carts brimming with leafy turnip greens.

But the highlight of this market's edibles has to be the Italian sausage dogs served at a little walk-up just across from the funnel cakes. Heralded by a hand-rendered image of a hot dog, this gateway to gustatory nirvana is tucked between the flea market's two larger dining establishments - a nameless snack bar touting typical grill items and Shirley's Restaurant, a kitschy little Western-influenced watering hole complete with wood-paneled interior and a spider web-covered wagon wheel chandelier.

But it's the sausage dogs - smothered in onions and heaped in an electric frying pan - that tantalize the crowd from their visible perch behind a grease-spotted sneeze guard. Man, woman, child - they all wait patiently to assume the number one spot in a line that trails well past the stacks of Reader's Digest condensed books being hawked a couple doors down. For two bucks, the Italian sausage dog is, hands down, the market's best deal (aforementioned toothbrushes excluded, of course) - and the closest approximation of fair food on a chilly afternoon in April.

The Barnyard Flea Market, unlike the elder statesman of Augusta's swap meet scene, has a shiny, new feel. Open and airy. No dark, grubby corners. And that's part of the problem for me. A little too antiseptic.

The Barnyard Restaurant, the culinary anchor of the flea market, is clean as the proverbial whistle, doing bountiful business under jolly, freshly painted murals promoting "HOT Dog and Ham Burger." Inside, a pair of lovebirds hover over matching chili dogs, an elderly couple in Rockports and Eddie Bauer apparel munch on grilled chicken sandwiches and the gals behind the counter cheerfully promote the special of the day - a bowl of chili and a BLT.

I buy a boat of crinkle cut fries for a buck, load them up with ketchup from a pristine bottle of Heinz and plop down on a bench near a group of old timers on banjo, guitar and washtub, knocking out a rousing version of Old Mountain Dew - ("My cousin Mort, he is sawed off and short, he measures a four foot two. But he feels like a giant, when you give him a pint of that good ole mountain dew.") Egad! It's a Norman Rockwell painting come to life!

If I'm going to eat at the flea market (or the fair or from any variety of street vendor), I want grit. I want grimy condiment bottles. I want to flirt with digestive danger. "You mean we're not earthy enough for you," laughs my friend Jackie, who sells ornaments, picture frames and other small gift items at a perfectly meticulous stand at the Barnyard. Exactly, I say. "We'll never get there," she informs me, "if the folks who run this place keep cleaning the bathrooms in the middle of the day and blowing the trash off the walkways every evening."

I spy some people at the end of the shed row spitting boiled peanut shells on the ground. My eyebrow arches, but Jackie shakes her head. "Dang if they don't clean those up every day too."

But I'm holding out hope for the Barnyard Flea Market. At a stand just down the row from Jackie's, both new tools and dusty packages of Tabasco- flavored Slim Jim's were prominently displayed. Some folks were selling sacks of potatoes and onions out of the back of a decommissioned La-Z-Boy delivery truck. And a woman working in Jeanne's Place, an Asian-themed walk-up featuring egg rolls, bulgogi and pepper steak, was wearing worn out pink bedroom slippers. These are signs. Promising signs.