Ashbury Market Appears to Be Shuttered

Fady A./Yelp

The sign over the Ashbury Market.

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SFoodie passed by the Ashbury Market (205 Frederick) Sunday afternoon to find it boarded up. The market, which has been owned by the Wong family since the 1950s, is where E&O chef Arnold Eric Wong and BevMo's Wilfred Wong both got started in the food business. When SFoodie moved to the Upper Haight from the Midwest in the early 1990s, the market introduced us to ingredients like baby arugula, blood oranges, and Aidell's sausages (yes, we really were that young and sheltered back then).

Ashbury Market has been run by several different proprietors since the Wongs sold it in 1999, and when SFoodie last spoke to current proprietor Resat Turgut in June 2010, he was luring street-food vendors to the market, trying to attracting customers. UrbanFresh, the grocery-delivery business Turgut told SFoodie he was launching, appears to be on hiatus, too. Is this the new Whole Foods' first victim? Is it a temporary closure? We will report back.