SLO Good Food

A large crowd at the weekly Downtown SLO Farmers Market on March 6, 2025.  (Photo/Roman Noravian) BY: ROMAN NORAVIAN Every Thursday night at 6 p.m., five blocks of Higuera Street in downtown San Luis Obispo turn into a bustling hub of activity, with Cal Poly students, locals, and tourists all packing the road. This is the Downtown SLO Farmers Market, which has over 100 booths and runs year-round, according to Downtown SLO’s website. At the market, attendees can purchase a wide range of products, including produce from local farmers, food, and jewelry. “It takes about 20 hours [to prepare offsite], and then once we get here, we have the setup [down] super quick now, probably around 15 minutes,” SLO Meltdown owner Jenny Thompson said. Even though each booth only has around a three hour window to sell their products, Poke Morro owner Carmen Leyva said they don’t view one another as competitors. “I can go to any booth and ask for any dish and they won’t charge me for it,” Leyva said. “...

Nick Taylor (@waterreviewsbynick) sips water from his water bottle. (Photo/Roman Noravian) BY: ROMAN NORAVIAN A cornerstone of social media is food reviews, but you'd be hard-pressed to find an account dedicated to reviewing drinking water at a college campus. This is exactly what Cal Poly first-year physics major Nick Taylor does on his Instagram account @waterreviewsbynick.  He finds different water bottle filling stations at Cal Poly's various residential and academic buildings, chugs the water, and then rates it on a scale of one to 10. What inspired you to start the @waterreviewsbynick page? Nick Taylor: I think it was just I had an argument with a friend about how fast I could chug a liter of water. And I was like, you what would be funny? If I just started chugging a liter of water and then posted it to Instagram.
And initially the idea was I would not even give it a review. I would just go, that's water or that's not water. How do you decide which water filling ...