Why I Always Visit the Local Food Market When I Travel

DISPATCH

Food markets are often my first stop in a new destination. Forget the souvenir shops: if you want to understand how a place really eats, start with what its people are buying.

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Photograph: Georgina Ingham

Whenever I arrive somewhere new, one of the first things I look for is the local food market.

Not because I urgently need a kilo of tomatoes while staying in a hotel room. I go because markets tell you things about a place that guidebooks often miss.

What markets reveal

They show you what is in season, what is cheap, what is prized and what people actually put on the table. You see cheeses from nearby farms, fish from the coast, fruit from the surrounding countryside, breads and preserves shaped by local habit.

A restaurant gives you somebody else’s finished interpretation of a place. A market shows you the raw material — and, crucially, who is buying it.

Some of the world’s most famous food markets have become attractions in their own right. Nothing wrong with admiring the beautiful displays, but give me the stall with a queue of locals over the one designed primarily to be photographed.

I want to know what people are taking home for dinner.

Follow the queue

Markets are also one of the easiest places to talk to people. Ask what something is, how it is cooked or what is particularly good that day and you will often get a better answer than any search result could give you.

Those small conversations have pointed me towards dishes, ingredients and places I would otherwise have missed entirely.

Travel increasingly comes packaged for us: ranked, reviewed, mapped and recommended before we have even arrived. I find that rather boring. Markets resist it, at least a little. You still have to look, listen and work things out for yourself.

So yes, visit the cathedral. See the museum. Book the famous restaurant.

But if you really want to understand a place, follow the shopping bags and see what people are buying for dinner.

Love exploring local food when you travel? Save this Dispatch to Pinterest for a reminder to seek out the market on your next trip.

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