Richmond and I made a special expedition to Worcester to get Jamaican Ingredients for John's Jamaican Birthday Dinner. We ended up visiting 16 markets representing many nations in a single busy day!

We went to:

• Ed Hyder's Mediterranean Marketplace for vanilla beans, shelled walnuts, and mustard
• Bahnan's Market Syrian bread, grape molasses (?!) and tahini
• Danco African Market for hot sauce and hotter sauce... (no website)
• Compare Market for yam, oxtail, coconut milk, red beans, and most of the other ingredients for the Jamaican Feast
• Mekong Market for Pennywort Drink to keep us fueled (no website)
• European Cafe and Deli for (don't judge) head cheese, double-smoked kielbasa, liverwurst (the real stuff), kabanoszy, dried mushrooms, and pierogies
• European Bakery for inspiration, but I couldn't add sweets to my haul of goodies!
• Golemo's Deli for horseradish and other condiments
• Tom's International Delicatessen where we tried some mushroom pirogies, and then some more to be quite certain that they were as good as we thought...
• Lunch at Weintraub's Jewish Delicatessen was a welcome break, with whitefish salad and kishka with gravy - yumm!
• Widoff's Bakery - excellent rye bread, pumpernickel, and awesome bagels and bialys
• Fairway Beef - a wholesaler of the usual meats plus your go-to place for sausage casings and chittlins.
• D'Errico's Market - formerly all Italian butcher and market on Worcester's "Italian main street", now mostly Italian with some Brazilian goodies as well.
• Price Rite Supermarket - a great array of produce, including Seville Oranges that I had never seen fresh before. A helpful employee there identified the Jamaican cassava as the Puerto Rican Yuca, solving a mystery.
• Austin Liquors - a great selection of New England craft beers, but the wine and spirits selection has suffered. I think their Shrewsbury store is better now.
• Crown Bakery - a fine Swedish bakery that also carries Swedish cheeses, sausages, and prepared foods.
• Moscow Nights - a Russian Deli that also supplies prepared foods to a residential area. (no website)

We finished with a snack at the brilliant and fiercely locavore Armsby Abbey before heading home by way of Julio's Liquors in Westboro, where I bought some New England Rum.

Here's a great article about Worcester's ethnic markets.