Reading Terminal Indoor Market - View this location on map The approach to the Reading Terminal indoor market -part city center farmers' market, part vast deli - is not too impressive. South to north you cross Market Street at 12th Street, keeping the giant guitar of the Hard Rock Cafe hard to your right, and enter through pavement level glass doors with a municipal look to them. Inside it is a different matter. Aisles upon aisles of juice bars, fish mongers, Thai soup and sandwich stalls offer one of the most diverse eating experiences you can have in the city. If you so wished, you could lunch here daily and never get bored soaking up the well-fed atmosphere under the multicolor hues of neon signs displaying such legends as 'EAT FISH LIVE LONGER' and 'Rick's Philly Steaks'. The Philly Steak - supposedly popularized when a passing cab driver smelled the original Rick adding melting cheese and fried onions to his steak sandwich and asked for one himself - is something of a Philadelphia institution. To my tastes, it was less than the sum of its parts, but the similarly exulted hoagie (multiple Italian cold meats wrapped around onions, tomatoes, oil and vinegar in a long bread roll) was a snack without parallel. You can get a good hoagie across Philadelphia, particularly in the delis around the outdoor Italian Market below South Street. But what you get in the indoor market are real life Pennsylvania Dutch (the group that includes the Amish) who make the trip from Lancaster County to the big city three times a week to sell their farm and farmhouse produce. One of the overlooked advantages of maintaining an 18th-century lifestyle is the quality of cream you can get when such practices as pasteurisation and other contemporary methods of dairy farming are regarded as among the worst of the modern world. Try a dollop with some apple pie. Then go for a long walk. 12th and Arch Street, Philadelphia, PA Cultural, Historical, Local Spot, Kids

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