Terminal Gluttony Here's Our Guide To Eating At The Reading Market

A few years ago, food writers from around the country were invited to Philadelphia by the Convention and Visitors' Bureau to sample local cuisine. Among the many opinions offered was universal praise of the Reading Terminal Market as a local treasure few, if any, other cities can duplicate.

Interestingly enough, the 93-year-old Market plumetted to its nadir only seven years ago. In 1980, the Reading Company made a commitment to revitalize it under the direction of David O' Neil. Today the market thrives. On a good week some 70,000 people will pass through its doors facing Arch, Filbert, 11th and 12th streets to shop for scrapple from Eugene Moyer & Son, which has been making it the same way since the Civil War, stone-ground flours from Noelle Margerum whose great grandfather was an original tenant and organically grown fruits and vegetables from Lower Valley Produce of Lancaster County.

They also come to eat at places like Bassett's, run by the fourth generation member of the family that began selling handmade ice cream in 1893, the year the Market opened, Spataro's, operated for 40 continuous years by the diminutive, hunched, Dominic Spataro, whose hearty sandwiches are sold at ridiculously low prices and the Stoltzfus Lunch Counter, where simple, honest food and genuine, homespun manner never fail to impress.

For years O'Neil has steadfastly denied entry to fast food chains and trendy tourist boutiques, preventing the Market from becoming a Philadelphia version of Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace.

His biggest challenge, however, may yet be ahead. A proposed $468 million (and counting) convention center is scheduled to be built above the Market utilizing the historic train shed, the largest structure of its kind in the country. (In 1893 when the Pennsylvania Railroad wanted to build a terminal on the site of a farmers' market, it met with strong opposition from merchants. The railroad was forced to build over them and thus, the Reading Terminal Market was created.)

O'Neil, though, isn't worried. "This Market's been through two wars, the Depression, and the bankruptcy of the railroad. It'll survive the convention center."