A weekly about what is cooked, grown and built in one city.

This week

• 
  Markets · 9 min

  The last two sellers on the market hall's north row

  Thirty stalls in 1998, two today. What happened to the other twenty-eight, told by the people who stayed.

• 
  Food · 12 min

  Six bakers, one flour, six very different loaves

  We bought the same sack of rye flour for six bakeries and watched what each of them did with it.

• 
  Workshops · 7 min

  A cabinetmaker who refuses to work with plywood

  It costs him orders every month. He explains the arithmetic, and why he still says no.

• 
  People · 6 min

  The woman who repairs the market's scales

  One van, four hundred traders, and a trade with nobody coming up behind it.

• 
  Food · 10 min

  What a dish costs when you buy it the way a restaurant does

  We priced one pot roast three ways: at the market, at the wholesaler, and on the menu.

• 
  Markets · 5 min

  Thursday, 5:40 a.m., before the gates open

  An hour of unloading, told in the order it happens.

• 
  Workshops · 8 min

  Three workshops that share one extractor

  Tools are expensive and space is short. Four blocks away, three trades solved both at once.

• 
  Food · 7 min

  The bread that only exists on Fridays

  A loaf baked once a week, by two bakeries, for reasons neither can fully explain.

• 
  People · 11 min

  Forty years behind the same counter

  A grocer on what changed, what did not, and the one thing he would do differently.