320 Market Cafe

211 West State Street
Media, PA 19063
(610) 565-8320
Website

The 320 Market (originally written about here) has an outpost in Media that recently moved into nicer, larger digs. It may not look to pretty from the outside, but inside is a nice market, cafe, and full liquor license hangout.

The prepared foods here are always the best. This is still the case.

Pre-made sandwiches and re-heat items available below.

Although the sandwiches were never anything to write home about, the one constant is the chips and pico. Holy hell. The salsa is approximately 50% avocado, and the rest is tomato, red onions, and some sort of voodoo that makes the ingredients stay tart, fresh tasting, and utterly addictive. Some of my favorite anywhere. PP tip: get the to-go version for about $10 over the $6 menu offering. You will get 3 times the salsa and chips, and can take the extra to go.

I am sad to say, the third best thing I had here was a salad. Yes, a salad. The Misto has all kinds of green leaves, nuts, figs, blue cheese, and a house dressing. (the second best thing was the beer)

You can go ahead and skip the Italian. The bread was good, the meat was quality, but the sandwich was tiny, dry, loaded with red onion (?), and subbed basil instead of lettuce. Sometimes things are better left alone. Italian hoagies in the Philadelphia area are one of those things.

Sparsely filled sandwich below.

Compare this with a recent gold standard Italian hoagie and you will understand my tears of sadness.

The meatball looked good in theory, but was another item weak in practice. The sandwich was dry (again), although they did microwave some extra gravy from a container of meatballs in the to-go case for me upon request. The balls themselves were bland, dense, and tended to fall out the back of the roll. After having ricotta meatballs recently, I have developed a palate for fleshy, tender spheres with some zing. These were not they.

Also, meatballs need a supple rolls to avoid the aforementioned "loose rear" issue, and these rolls were better suited to a wetter job.

The market is a great place to get some beer (they have 20 great, reasonably priced drafts) or chips and salsa. But my money is better spent on sandwiches with some soul. And ingredients.