Kapaa Farmers Market

I loved this farmers market. Really has a local feel. Delicious fresh fruits! It has a hilarious ritual that you can’t start shopping until a bell rings and people camp out in from of their favorite vendors. Also wear sunscreen, very little shade!

Amazing farmers market, just what we were looking for. Sad we don’t have anything similar back home.

I wish this was closer to home! The nicest surprise was the fresh ginger. Huge, white and so beautiful. The stuff they sell in Publix is gross next to these.
I bought a star fruit, a huge ripe mango, white sweet potatoes, and a ripe avocado which is perfect for dinner tonight.
Prices were great. The large Avocados were $ 1 each as was the star fruit. The most expensive item was the mango at $ 8 but it was worth it. Free samples at the stands enticed everyone to try atypical fruits and then buy them! If you are near Kapa’a Town Park on a Wednesday afternoon, you have to stop in! Plenty of free parking.

AAAAAAAAAW YEEEEEEEAH!
Strawberry papaya
Butter Avocado
Bok choy
«Turnish» (White radish with a turnip-​like quality to them
Okinawa sweet potatoes
Maui onions
All of it so good and ready to eat or cook.
Plenty of vendors and I got there as many were shutting down… still plenty of items left.

Awesome. Bring bags and cash. We got beautiful produce from the organic booth. Also amazing ginger soda at the food truck. Lots of fun!

This place is like heaven in a parking lot. Your eyes will be opened to a whole new world of produce you never new existed.
You can find different varieties of familiar looking fruits (ice cream mangos, ice cream bananas, tiny lady finger bananas, etc), and fruits you never knew existed (lilikoi, mountain apples, lychees, etc), fresh green coconuts with the tops chopped off, so you can drink the coconut water inside, and fresh veggies (purple sweet potatoes, huge avocados, and on and on). Talk about paradise. Most vendors were offering free samples.
Cash only. There are a lot of farmer’s markets on Kauai (probably every day of the week), so check with your hotel for what time the Kapaa one is on, and any others.

If you like papaya, this is the place to go. We bought 10 sunrise papayas from different vendors, ranging from $.50 to $ 1.00 per fruit!!! We also bought star fruit, guava, apple bananas and mangoes. Being from California, we get amazing locally grown fruit at good prices. But the prices for what we bought here were just downright cheap. We thought the pineapple prices were a bit pricey-​$ 4 to $ 8 depending the the size. In CA, we can get Hawaiian pineapple for less than that.

As most other farmers markets in the states, it can be a bit pricier than the grocery store but the beauty of it is you are getting your produce/​flowers from the growers themselves! All the locals I spoke to referred me to this particular farmers market over the rest due to the variety and amount of vendors. There were at least 50 vendors.
They had a bunch of fruit I had never had that were really good! Some black cherry looking fruit and a cream-​apple. The cream apple was my favorite along with the mango’s and pineapples!
There is a vendor that sales ice cold coconuts still attacked to the vines!
While in Kapaa, this is a must on a Wednesday!

This is the most wonderful Farmers Market I’ve ever been to.
Seriously: it’s mind-​blowing. Thirty+ vendors sell pretty much everything that grows on this island: the usual mangoes, pineapples, papayas, lilikoi. But everything else, too. Bananas (apple, lady finger and the incredible ice cream bananas) as well as tons of citrus (fresh grapefruit or calamensi lime, anyone?), okra, squash blossoms, Japanese eggplant, avocados, young coconuts, longon. Longon is a cousin of lychee with a more melon flavor; it is delicious served chilled. Dragon fruit is the most beautiful fruit in the world and also delicious.
And then there’s jackfruit. Known as durian in southeast Asia, these prickly and giant green fruits smell like hell, like onions rotting in an old gym sock. I kid you not. But if a vendor is selling it, she might just have chunks of it in a little plastic container for sell. Served cold, you won’t smell it but will be bowled over. It’s sweet, juicy, fruity and delicious.
If you’re staying in Kapaa, hell if you’re staying anywhere on the island, you must stop by on a Wednesday after 3 pm.
Don’t miss this!