Milk and Honey Market moves into Mt. Vernon
Above: The newly opened Milk and Honey Market seeks to fill a need for local food in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood.
Gunpowder Bison. Pequea Valley Yogurt. Tuscarora organic produce. These are just a few of Dana Valery’s favorite things stocked at her new store, Milk and Honey Market, in Mt. Vernon.
The store, which opened November 6th, is a cross between a coffee shop, corner deli, and a farm stand, and is located in the Professional Arts Building at 816 Cathedral Street.The newly-restored porcelain-tiled space is well lit by huge windows overlooking Cathedral street providing ample opportunity for passersby to spy the produce and paninis stocked within.
The store is filled with locally-made products that range from Clementine's bread-and-butter pickles to Taharka Salted Caramel ice cream. Photo by Oliver Hulland
Founded by Valery, her husband Ernst Valery and another couple, Jim Campbell and Nancy Hooff, the store is modeled after the original Milk and Honey Market in Philadelphia. The founders of the store in Philadelphia, Annie Baum-Stein and Mauro Daigle, are close friends with Valery and her husband, and acted as consultants to the new Baltimore shop.
Dana Valery, co-owner of Milk & Honey Market
After seeing the success of the original M & H, Valery and her husband decided to see if the same model would fly in Baltimore.
“We had an eye on this space because we knew the owners of the building,” said Valery, “and we said to ourselves ‘what can we do here?’”
Originally the store was going to focus solely on local food, but as they have settled in, “local” has taken on a new and slightly more flexible meaning.
“It’s really this neighborhood, and we are trying to fill a need in the neighborhood and listen to our customers,” said Valery. “We want to respond to our community.”
Dedicated to “regional sustainability” the store strives to stock as many local products as possible, but doesn’t exclude what Valery described as items from a “global marketplace” including limes and avocados. Produce availability will fluctuate with the seasons, but Valery expects to be able to stock local dairy and meat for most of the year, and is currently in talks with area farms that produce winter produce in greenhouses.
In the two weeks since they have opened, the shelves have filled out with a wide array of products with a focus on French and Italian cooking. “We will always have onion and garlic, and other basics,” explained Valery.
Local produce like this Butternut squash comes from Tuscarora Organic Growers Cooperative out of the Juniata River Valley in Pennsylvania. Photo by Oliver Hulland
One of the problems Valery faced was finding enough farms to stock the store.
“We look for vendors that are local that have best practices,” said Valery. “Not everything is organic.”
In addition to produce, local chefs have been tapped to produce a diverse selection of prepared foods, including Max’s empanadas and pickles and chicken liver pâté from Clementine. They also offer made-to-order sandwiches and paninis for the lunch rush driven by the many businesses in the neighborhood, as well as a standard coffee bar menu sourced with La Colombe coffee out of Philadelphia.
The deli features made-to-order sandwiches and paninis as well as locally prepared foods. Photo by Oliver Hulland
Though described by Valery as “still a work in progress” the store is well worth a visit for anyone in the Mt. Vernon neighborhood. Or, now that December is here, for those of us that can no longer get Gunpowder Bison from the farmer’s market.
For those last-minute Thanksgiving errands, Valery has special ordered local cranberries from Tuscarora Organic Cooperative in Pennsylvania, extra turkeys from Sunny Side Farms, and veggie burgers for the non-meat eaters in the family. Milk and Honey will be open from 8AM until 2 PM on Thanksgiving Day.