From the Editor

In this Market Guide, we're making a few assumptions. We figure you know where you get your daily bread and your weekly milk (or rice milk, as the case may be).

The decision to do your day-to-day shopping at New Seasons or Whole Foods, at Fred Meyer or the Grocery Outlet, at the Alberta Street Co-Op or Trader Joe's probably has a lot to do with what neighborhood you live in. It probably also has to do with how you see yourself as a person. You don't need us to help you with that.

The markets in Willamette Week's Market Guide 2013 are for food experiences that fall somewhere between romance and adventure—meals meant not just for sustenance and getting through the day, but for genuine enjoyment and the fun of something new. 

In kindergarten, for example, every Tuesday was New Fruit Day. We're still not over it.

The specialty markets in this guide are home to hard-to-find spices or the freshest produce, breads still warm from the oven, ingredients for special meals and still-swimming seafood. This could be locally grown kale or berbere powder from Ethiopia, fine olio nuovo from Italy or cherry soda from North Carolina. Heck, it could be ingredients for pork ragu from Artigiano's Rachael Grossman, adobo chicken from Food in Bloom's Billy Schumaker or a four-cup chicken recipe from Aviary's Sarah Pliner.

Wherever you do your shopping, it's our hope that after consulting this guide, you'll feel inspired to add a few of these little stores to your regular rotation. In our fifth year of the guide we're still finding new ones we love, and we're glad to share them. Feel free to send along your own discoveries to mkorfhage@wweek.com.

Happy eating.