The 5 A.M. Produce Run

The mandi at five in the morning is a negotiation in headlights. Our receiving lead walks it with a thermos and a rule: nothing tired comes home.

Romaine is picked up first, while the market is coldest — heads are checked for rib snap, not just leaf colour. Tomatoes are bought under-ripe on purpose; they finish in the kitchen's ambient rack, not a cold room that kills their smell. Herbs are the diva category: mint and dill travel wrapped and upright, and anything that's sat in the sun gets left behind, whatever the discount.

Back at the kitchen by seven, everything goes through the same gate: wash, spin, chill, label. The spinner matters more than people think — dressing slides off wet leaves, and a watery bowl is a broken promise. Labels carry the date and the batch, so any crate can be traced and any doubt resolved by binning, not debating.

By eleven, when the first orders land, the walk-in reads like a market stall that learned discipline. That's the whole freshness system: buy sceptically, prep immediately, label everything, and let the bowl take the credit.