On September 17, 2026, the Monterey Bay Certified Farmers Market community lost one of its most familiar faces, its most enthusiastic teachers, and one of its dearest friends.
Andrew Cohen — Chef Andrew to many of us — had been part of the farmers market for so long that it is difficult to imagine the place without him.
I had the good fortune to stand beside him for nineteen years worth of Saturday mornings at the Aptos Farmers Market, where Andrew worked with Annaliese and me at our Malabar Trading Company booth. We sold tea, chai, Annaliese’s baked goods and condiments, but inevitably we were also selling something else: whatever Andrew happened to know about food that morning.
And Andrew knew a lot.
He could take a vegetable someone had never seen before and, within minutes, explain what it tasted like, how to choose it, what to pair it with, and probably give you two ways to cook it. Maybe three.
People would stop, listen for a moment, and then say, “Wait. Say that again,” while fumbling for their phones so they could record what he was telling them.
Andrew had the gift of grub gab.
The Market Was His Church
Andrew’s relationship with the farmers market began decades before “farm-to-table” became part of the culinary vocabulary.
He came to the Santa Cruz-area farmers markets in the early 1980s, when organic farming was still considered somewhat radical and the local food movement was only beginning to find its footing. Farmers such as Ken Kimes, Jerry Thomas and Laurie Coke were helping change the way people thought about fresh food, and Andrew was paying attention.
He always paid attention.
Finding food that tasted good was Andrew’s North Star. It didn’t matter if it swam or sprouted, fell from a tree or came from a hen. He was all in.
Over the years, he developed an uncanny eye for produce. He could examine a pile of tomatoes, carrots or peaches and somehow locate the one he wanted. I often imagined farmers seeing Andrew approach their stall and quietly reaching for the best of the bunch, the way an artist might pull out a favorite painting for someone who would truly appreciate it.
The Aptos Farmers Market became Andrew’s church.
The fruits and vegetables were the offerings, brought by farmers who had often harvested them only a day before. As Andrew made his rounds, growers called out to him. He asked questions. They talked about what was particularly good that week. Somewhere during those conversations, meals began assembling themselves inside Andrew’s head.
Watching Andrew “grocery up” on a Saturday morning was a show in itself.
He shopped for food the way Elmer Fudd hunted Bugs Bunny: vewy carefully.
Customers sometimes followed along. Ask Andrew one question about a vegetable and you might find yourself accompanying him to the next farm stand while the conversation continued.
Had he stood on a box in the center of the market and announced that he was going to explain how to cook a potato, I’m fairly certain he could have drawn a crowd.
Becoming Chef Andrew
Andrew’s fascination with food started early.
Growing up in California, he was surrounded by the kind of produce that would influence the rest of his life. His mother taught him to make a salad when he was a boy. There were citrus and avocados growing in the backyard. He learned to score cucumbers, make radish roses and notice the small details that turn food into something memorable.
Later, while studying environmental studies, ethics and communication at UC Santa Cruz, Andrew continually found his way back to kitchens and food. He worked at places including India Joze and The Crow’s Nest before attending the California Culinary Academy and eventually interning at Chez Panisse.
Somewhere along the way, a philosophy took hold: Freshness matters. Seasonality matters. Farmers matter.
Those ideas stayed with Andrew for the rest of his life.
When the Monterey Bay Certified Farmers Markets named him Chef in Residence, the title suited him perfectly.
He took it seriously, although never solemnly.
Andrew had the knowledge of a chef, but he was happiest sharing it with ordinary people standing in the middle of a farmers market trying to decide what to make for dinner.
An unfamiliar vegetable was not a problem to Andrew. It was an opportunity.
Celeriac was one of his favorites.
Why?
Because it was ugly and nobody talked about it.
That was Andrew. He loved discovering the overlooked thing and then persuading everyone else to notice it too.
The Man Behind the Samples
At Malabar, Annaliese created the tea and chai blends, baked goods, preserves and many other delicious things, while Andrew possessed an almost supernatural ability to explain them.
Her creative genius and Andrew’s gift of grub gab went together like hands and pockets.
I was essentially the noise.
Andrew was the signal.
I could attract someone to the booth, but Andrew could make them stay.
I watched him hand food and chai samples to what felt like a billion people over the years, always with the extraordinary care and concentration of someone doing something far more important than passing across a tiny cup.
The description usually started before the sample ever reached the customer.
People tried to listen and taste at the same time.
Andrew could do this for hours.
He had that rare ability to make food sound interesting without making it intimidating.
Children were especially fun to watch around him. A skeptical child trying an unfamiliar fruit or vegetable was a challenge Andrew relished. He never talked down to them. He simply made the food sound so interesting that eventually curiosity won.
Then came the bite.
And sometimes, that wonderful surprised expression.
Andrew lived for that.
Food, Family and the Rest of Life
For all his passion about food, Andrew loved his family even more.
His wife, Denise, was beside him for more than forty years — partner, confidante and counterweight to the Chef Andrew persona the rest of us knew so well.
Their children, Maurice and Kira, were part of our market years too. I knew them when they were little and watched them come to the booth while their father served chai and baked goods.
There was something wonderful about seeing them watch Daddy turn into Chef Andrew.
For a child, discovering that other adults think your father is brilliant must be a peculiar experience.
Andrew also loved books and music, conversation and ideas. He was one of those people you could talk with for a long time because food was never only about food. Eventually the discussion would wander into farming, ethics, music, history, family, culture or why some ingredient everyone ignored was actually wonderful.
He was curious.
And curiosity may have been his greatest gift.
A Well-Seasoned Cast-Iron Skillet
The last years of Andrew’s life asked far too much of him physically.
And yet, through enormous health challenges and changes to his daily life, the Andrew we knew remained remarkably present.
After one hospitalization, he came back to the farmers market almost immediately.
Why?
He needed to be with his tribe.
That was the market to Andrew.
His tribe.
The farmers. The customers. The cooks. The children. The people carrying baskets full of produce and wondering what on earth they were going to do with it.
Andrew had spent decades connecting all of them.
Even when his body made returning to the market increasingly difficult, his interest in food never left him.
Our last conversation was about food.
Of course it was.
We sat together in the sun while he waited for a doctor’s appointment. The tension seemed to have left his face that day. His eyes looked bright, and his chuckles came easily.
Making Andrew laugh was one of my favorite things.
When he really got going, his face scrunched up, his eyes closed, and his whole enormous chest shook.
I will miss that laugh.
I will miss the conversations.
And I will miss my friend.
But I suspect I am far from alone.
Andrew Cohen was generous, caring, reliable and dependable — as solid as a well-seasoned cast-iron skillet.
The world is better because AC was here.
And it eats better, too.
His Footprints Are Everywhere
It will be strange to walk through the Aptos Farmers Market without seeing Andrew studying a farmer’s display, talking with a customer or thinking about what he could make from whatever had just come out of the ground.
But perhaps he hasn’t entirely left.
His footprints are everywhere.
They are in the recipes he shared.
They are in the home cooks he encouraged.
They are in the children he convinced to taste something new.
They are in the farmers whose work he respected so deeply.
They are in Edible Paradise, where he contributed his knowledge and recipes.
They are in the countless meals that began with someone asking Andrew, “What should I do with this?”
And they are in those of us fortunate enough to have stood beside him, shopped with him, learned from him, argued about food with him, laughed with him and called him friend.
So when you are wandering through the market one Saturday morning and find yourself holding some beautiful vegetable with absolutely no idea what to do with it, listen carefully.
Andrew may still have something to say.
And I have a pretty good idea how he’ll begin:
“First, get your pan rippin’ hot…”
Rest in peace, my friend.
You will be forever in our hearts.
A Gathering for Andrew
On Saturday, October 24, at 10 a.m., we invite you to join us at the Aptos Farmers Market for a lighthearted farewell to Andrew. Come share a favorite memory, a story, a laugh, or simply raise a cup of chai with us in honor of our beloved chef, teacher, and friend. We’ll gather on the lower level of the market, at the far end. All are welcome.
