The greenmarket in fall.

Willa Moore knows who is shopping Union Square Greenmarket by what they say: the cooks there talk ramp season and greet the person restocking Lani's Farm by name. Stefano Secchi, who cooks at Rezdora and Massara, takes his kids on a Saturday morning and drives the produce back for both restaurants in an Ape, and the stalls he names are Eckerton Hill, Lani's and Norwich Meadows. Ruth Rogers goes every few months and says the fall is the time. Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket is where you go for one producer. Wilklow Orchards drives cider and orchard fruit down from Ulster County to the plaza every Saturday, and Cato Corner brings raw-milk cheese over from Connecticut, which is worth crossing the park for in October.

Dominique Roy, the chef de cuisine at Eleven Madison Park, keeps going back to abcV, and his argument is that a kitchen turning those covers normally runs on standing orders. Daniel Humm names the same room as one of his favorite lunches in the city and orders the endive and castelfranco radicchio. The next door along the same building runs a wood oven and a less reliable kitchen, and Molly Fitzpatrick's route through abc kitchen is worth following. Jess Shadbolt and Clare de Boer write King's card off the morning's shopping, so the useful question at that table is what came in. Dirt Candy takes the idea to its end: Amanda Cohen cooks nothing but vegetables, holds a MICHELIN Star and a Green Star, and rebuilds one tasting menu every season.

Dan Barber opens dinner at Blue Hill at Stone Barns on a procession of what came out of the ground at Tarrytown that day, turns retired grass-fed dairy cows into the beef course, and ferments food waste back into food in his own microbiology lab. The market is a middle step and this room cuts it out. Ruth Reichl says you go there for an education, and she budgets four hours at the table. One White Street runs the same relationship from the other end, with Rigor Hill Farm in Columbia County and a market next door working as one business with the Tribeca dining room. And Dickson's Farmstand Meats is the version of this you can carry home: Jake Dickson buys whole animals off farms that keep nothing on a feedlot, and Will Teague makes the salami downstairs at Chelsea Market.

Nick Tamburo built the apple cider doughnut at Smithereens out of a complaint. He was tired of the ones that taste of cinnamon and sugar, so the cider goes into the batter and it finishes with freeze-dried apple and malic acid. That is the reason to book the room while it is still fall. Then there is the New York classic that ignores the calendar entirely. Junior's Restaurant (Downtown Brooklyn) works the cream cheese heavy, browns the top and sets the slab on a graham crust that has to survive the weight, and Will Hartman's test is whether that crust stays crisp.

I want Sungold and Cherokee Purple tomatoes in August and Jonagold apples in the fall, which is a New York habit I never lost, and farmers markets are why I cook the way I do and where I go for the seasonal and rare varieties. So this guide is arranged the way I would spend the day. Buy first, eat second, and let the produce decide. Two limits belong on the page. I have not found anything worth sending you to inside Central Park, so the fall walk this guide implies stops at the edge of Prospect Park. And Ruth Rogers named a Chelsea market beside Union Square that I still cannot identify. If you have one morning, take the Saturday. It is the only day both markets trade.