Oh, the struggles in getting good food to Boston.

When I first moved here the grocery stores were dirty and ugly, especially compared to those I had left behind in California. Even more depressing, the city had only two kinds of restaurants—those that excluded women and those with rude waitresses.

Our restaurants improved and Bread & Circus and Whole Foods arrived, but some say we’ve not progressed much.

Newly arrived resident Pamela Sandy of the Back Bay is an indication of how the rest of the world might judge what Bostonians are accustomed to.

“Boston was a larger city,” she explained. “I thought it would be so much better. I never thought Boston would be behind the curve.”

What city is Boston larger than and should have been so much better than? Cleveland. That’s where Sandy lived before she moved here. Cleveland, renowned for its flammable river, has better food than Boston. Go figure.

Sandy was particularly dismayed at the quality of Boston’s grocery stores, as you also might be after you’ve visited a family member in the West or Midwest.  She had expected that Boston would have a thriving public market with non-factory food and interesting provisions similar to Cleveland’s 100-year-old West End Market, which is owned by the city and rented to local vendors who carry high quality provisions, both local and exotic. She said nothing in Boston, including Whole Foods, compares to that quality.

So, interested newcomer that she was, she turned up at a meeting of the Public Market Commission at the State House a couple of weeks ago. A year-round public market has been in the works for several years. It will be located in the Haymarket T station building near the Greenway. Its purpose is to encourage the growth and prosperity of Massachusetts farms and fisheries and provide a better food shopping experience than the one that has so disappointed Sandy.

Sandy, however, was discouraged by what she learned at the meeting. “No one is talking about the public’s interest,” she said.

Lots of the talk showed fear and negativity. She learned that Haymarket push-cart vendors see a public market as menacing. She learned that the produce they sell would presumably otherwise go into a dumpster if they didn’t buy it. She learned that was acceptable since a benefit of the push-carts, besides being cheap, is that on the day before the Super Bowl you can buy avocados ripe enough for a tasty guacamole. She learned that the push-cart vendors are mad that the state is subsidizing a public market. She learned the push-cart vendors are afraid that the public market vendors will buy the same factory food they buy from the Chelsea markets, thus competing with them—unlikely since a public market with factory food would soon lose the kind of customers who would shop at a public market.

She learned that some shoppers want only Massachusetts-grown produce, which in March could be limited to meat, squash, turnips and parsnips. She learned that one fishmonger claimed she couldn’t get local fish all year long. But Mary Griffin, Commissioner of the Department of Fish and Game, unfurled a poster listing such fish as white hake, grey sole, haddock and lobster, that are commonly landed in winter. (Griffin also reported later that although other states land greater numbers of fish, fish landed in Massachusetts have the greatest value.)

Sandy wants local vendors she can get to know. She wants more variety than she believes Massachusetts alone can provide. If it’s only seasonal provisions, Sandy believes the market won’t survive. She points to Urban Herbs, a Cleveland West End Market vendor that sells salt, rice and spices from all over the world, as the kind of imaginative local vendor she envisions.

A long-time city resident had other opinions about the matter. Jeannette Herrmann of Beacon Hill said she shops for her family of four everywhere—Whole Foods, Shaw’s, and Haymarket, among others.

She wants few prepared foods, but lots of local and seasonal basic products. She is frustrated she can’t get such local and tasty fish as hake in some “local” markets, since it gets pushed out by imported salmon that fishmongers believe the public prefers.

Sandy, Herrmann and the pushcart people may all be satisfied as the public market commission gradually comes to a solution. While nothing is set in stone, it appears that a system is emerging that will rank potential vendors based on how local they and their products are. Presumably a Massachusetts vendor would get more points than a national chain. Meat, produce and fish raised, grown and landed in Massachusetts would get more points than the same items from New Jersey. New England products would have an edge over the rest of the country. There might be room for Guatemalan coffee roasted by a Jamaica Plain vendor or orange marmalade made by a clever cook from Worcester, but it remains to be seen.

Buyers intent on getting the best local and seasonal items presumably will also mosey over to Haymarket to discover the avocados that can be used that very day.

Pamela Sandy and Jeannette Herrmann will be happy when it all comes about. So will the rest of us. We’ve waited too long for this public market. It could happen by next fall.