JUNE 18, 2009 -- The world’s largest ball of yarn is just so passé. This Saturday, local chefs will attempt to build the world’s largest…Caprese salad. An extensive Google search turned up nothing conclusive on other over-sized salad attempts. So after this weekend the record for biggest Caprese salad is estimated to be: 24 feet (long).
The tall-order tossing takes place at The Mercato, the Little Italy farmer’s market celebrating its one-year anniversary this month. The salad will be forked up by three chefs—Eric Bauer of Anthology, Rob Conaway of The Glass Door and Joe Magnanelli of the currently-being-re-vamped Cucina Urbano (formerly Laurel)—and three culinary students.
For the record, a Caprese salad consists of tomatoes, fresh basil, mozzarella and olive oil. Organizers estimate it will take less than an hour to make history and rock the Caprese world. The super-salad will be portioned off and sold to the viewing audience. Proceeds will go to Kinder Garden, an actual garden program run by Washington Elementary School.
Mercato “meistra” Catt White is proud of how far the farmer’s market has come in one year. “Every farmer’s market has its own characteristics,” she says. “We’re European-style, with a focus on farmers.” In the beginning, there were 38 booths; now there are 82. There’s room for about 15 more.
On any given weekend (The Mercato is held every Saturday from 9:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.) upward of 3,000 people come to shop. But you can image that, with the record-sized Caprese salad going up, years from now 10 times that amount will claim to have been there.
