More
- Classifieds
- Cars
- Deals
- Real Estate
- Rentals
- Photos
- Find&Save
- Obituaries
- Archives
- Topics
- Blogs
- WP Wine Club

The Market Maven

By Jane Black,September 09, 2009

Robin Shuster chats up all comers at the Bloomingdale farmers market. "It's… (Dayna Smith )

Robin Shuster wants to talk -- to everyone.

"Those grapes are amazing," Shuster murmured to a shopper on a recent Sunday at the Bloomingdale farmers market. "There's a wonderful chicken recipe -- do you eat chicken? Not often? Well, you must try this. It's a Medieval French recipe."

"Did you find everything you need?" she chirps, all but blocking the path of a couple heading for their car. "Would you like to subscribe to the market e-mail? If you don't like it, I'll just unsubscribe you."

Okay. She can be a little bit pushy. Shuster herself will admit that. But there's charm in her enthusiasm for fresh celery ("isn't that flavor intense?"), goat meat, grapes and the small but sweet Charentais melons that she is sure she can persuade some farmer to grow next year. In her trademark floppy sun hat and oversize sunglasses, the 56-year-old manager marches around the market with a file of recipes under her arm. For many, Shuster is as much a draw as the ripe produce, cheeses and meats she promotes at Bloomingdale and at the Saturday 14th and U farmers market in Northwest, which she also directs.

"I am just one of those people who has to share my passion with people," Shuster said. "It's partly because of my background, partly because I'm a blabbermouth. That's who I am."

Shuster's markets, owned by her company, Markets & More, are not the biggest or the best known in Washington. On its busiest day, the market at 14th and U draws about 800 visitors. Compare that with the Dupont Circle market run by nonprofit FreshFarm Markets, which attracts as many as 5,000 on a Sunday morning. Still, Shuster's markets are developing cult followings. This month, Bloomingdale, with as many as 400 visitors weekly, was named the country's seventh favorite small market in a contest sponsored by the American Farmland Trust. (A market in Collingswood, N.J., took the top spot.)

It might not be surprising that Shuster grew up in New York, first on the Upper West Side of Manhattan and later in Rockland County. If she picked up a certain intensity in the city, it was life in the suburbs that helped set her on her path: Shuster's father had an organic garden. The family grew lettuce, tomatoes, eggplant, even corn, which her mother would turn into lasagnas or, true to her era, salads to accompany Swanson chicken potpies.

When she was 12, Shuster's father bought her the Time Life "Foods of the World" series. The cookbooks, 27 in all, inspired Shuster to head to the kitchen and ultimately to a job at the publisher. In 1976, Time Life decided to relocate its book division from New York to Washington. When much of the staff refused to make the move south, Shuster was hired at the new headquarters in Alexandria.

One of her first jobs was helping to produce "The Good Cook," a technique-focused series edited by legendary food writer Richard Olney. Francois Dionot, founder of L'Academie de Cuisine, was a consultant. It was Dionot who introduced Shuster to the pleasures of a French omelet -- "I had always hated scrambled eggs," she remembers -- and to visiting cooking teachers such as Madhur Jaffrey, Diana Kennedy, Claudia Roden and others.

By 1996, Shuster was director of marketing for Time Life's cookbook franchise. But the company's series, so popular in the 1970s and '80s, had lost its allure. "In the go-go years, Time Life was a very exciting place to work. We had the best people, and we got the best consultants to work with us," Shuster said. "But as things were going down, suddenly you didn't have $250,000 to do a book; and you didn't have 10 researchers, you had two. I was waking up every morning at 4 o'clock thinking: How can I save the cooking franchise?"

The stress at work was complicated by another development. In 1990, Shuster had been given a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. "I started thinking, what if I wind up in a wheelchair?" she said. "I decided to take some time off and think about what I wanted to do with my life."

It wasn't to run a farmers market -- at least, not yet. With some severance money in the bank, Shuster and her husband, University of Maryland professor Jeff Bub, bought a house in the Alpes de Provence. It's a long story, as stories of foreign real estate purchases tend to be. (See Peter Mayle's "A Year in Provence.") Shuster's involves a group of bohemian French friends, a house bought sight unseen and an intimidating French lawyer. The upshot: Shuster spent half of the next five years abroad, renovating the house, perfecting her French and maniacally visiting local farmers markets.

Back in Washington, Shuster was ready for a new adventure. (Her MS still affects her but the symptoms come and go.) In 2003, she volunteered at the Mount Pleasant farmers market. Four years later, she set out on her own, opening the 14th and U and Bloomingdale markets.