Third Street Farmers Market runs year-round out of Eastern Market’s Shed 2 on Saturdays, and if you go early enough — before 10 a.m. is honest advice — you’ll find produce vendors, spice sellers, and somewhere near the middle of it all, a table stacked with more varieties of fresh and dried mushrooms than most Detroit grocery stores have ever stocked. Lion’s mane the size of a softball. Hen of the woods still holding their shape. Dried morels in little paper bags. Shiitake that actually smell like something.
The vendor changes week to week depending on season and supply, but the mushroom presence at Eastern Market’s Shed 2 has been consistent enough that regulars know to look for it without needing a map. Ask the person running the table what came in that week. They’ll tell you. These aren’t trucked-in commodity mushrooms — most of what you find is foraged or cultivated regionally, and the vendor usually knows where and how.
Eastern Market itself is free to walk. What you spend depends entirely on what you buy. Dried mushrooms run roughly $8–$14 per bag depending on variety and quantity. Fresh lion’s mane might be $10–$16 a pound. It’s more than a grocery store, less than a specialty shop in a trendy neighborhood, and the quality justifies the gap. Bring cash — not every vendor takes cards, and the ATM line gets long by mid-morning.
Shed 2 is the main covered market shed, the one that runs along Winder Street between Russell and Market. Parking fills up fast along Russell; a lot on the east side of the sheds charges a few dollars on market days, or you can find street parking a few blocks out and walk in. The walk is worth it anyway — coming in from Gratiot or through the shed entrances gives you a better sense of the scale of the place.
Saturday market runs from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. year-round, though by early afternoon some vendors are packing up. The Wednesday market exists but is smaller and more variable. Saturday morning is when the full operation is running and the mushroom selection is most likely to be there.
Detroit doesn’t have a lot of dedicated specialty food markets, and what Eastern Market offers on a good Saturday is something close to that — not a farmers market in the suburban sense, where everything is artfully arranged and twice as expensive, but a working market with real variety, some wholesale energy, and vendors who generally know their product. The mushroom table is one reason to go, but you’ll leave with ramps in spring, good dry beans in fall, chiles you didn’t expect, and probably a coffee from one of the carts working the perimeter.
If you’ve only been to Eastern Market for the big summer Saturdays, you already know the energy. If you haven’t been at all, start there. Go early, go hungry, and find the mushroom table before someone else clears out the lion’s mane.
