Salteñas are the essential Bolivian breakfast pastry, consisting of a subtly sweet dough filled with saucy meat, vegetables, and sometimes egg, sealed with a braid, and baked.

Pasteles de queso are fluffy pockets of sweet fried dough filled with squeaky white cheese and dusted with powdered sugar. They’re often paired with api morado, a hot, spiced drink made from purple corn.

The chola, La Paz and El Alto’s traditional sandwich (named for the country’s indigenous women, who often serve them), is a pile of soft and crackly roasted pork shoulder, pickled onions and carrots, and ají chile sauce on a bun.

Ocas, Andean tubers that look like wrinkled fingers and taste like a sour potato (at right), are red, yellow, or sometimes a tie-dyed peachy pink. They’re one of hundreds of tuber varieties found in Bolivia’s Highlands.

Chuños are potatoes that have been repeatedly freeze-dried over the course of frigid Highland winter nights, and then stomped on and freeze-dried again. Something of a survival food, they’re a bit funky, like a potato truffle, and will last a decade in a root cellar.

Ulupica peppers’ minuscule size—similar to a small cherry pit—belie their heat (very spicy) and importance (as the progenitor of all capsicums).

Coca leaves are sun-dried, then chewed or brewed as tea for energy, appetite suppression, and—for the Altiplano tourist—to ease altitude sickness. They’re sold by women often seen sucking on a cheekful of coca themselves.

The post Market Foods of La Paz appeared first on Saveur.

I started going to Singapore about a decade ago, after I became a consultant for Singapore Air’s first and business class food service. Of course what they want on the planes is western food, Gotham Bar and Grill food, but what I ate at the Telok Ayer Market on my first visit there was on the other side of the spectrum. Sure, there are a lot of hawker markets in Singapore, but Telok Ayer was my first, and I became smitten. The first thing that strikes you, food aside, is the architecture. It’s just stunning, this octagonal structure punctuated by Victorian columns, soaring ceilings and intricately-designed wrought iron-steel throughout. The space is airy, light, almost church-like.

Bring your gaze down from the ceiling though, and you find a real culinary melting pot, Malaysian and Singaporean food crammed right next to a stall with Chinese noodles, next to another of Indian curries, flanked by a few hawking Vietnamese spring rolls, and a Filipino spot thrown in for good measure. Vegetarian cuisine is big there, too, which I love. Each stall serves one type of food, and it can get quite specific: noodle soup at one, say, chicken and rice at another, beer at a third. Go there at lunch or in the early evening, get a few snacks from a few different spots, bring it all back to a table, sit down, and watch the world go by. It’s truly the quickest, and most delicious, way to get the sense of the culture and the pulse of Singapore.

Telok Ayer Market
18 Raffles Quay, Singapore, 048582
+65 6220 2138

The post Trot the globe, bite-by-bite, at the world’s most bustling—and beautiful—hawker market appeared first on Saveur.

This is not entry-level fish,” says a smiling Michael Benevides, standing in what has to be the United States’ largest purpose-built bacalhau chamber. It occupies one end of Portugalia Marketplace, the emporium Benevides opened with his father, Fernando, six years ago in Fall River, Massachusetts. The glass-enclosed, temperature-­controlled monument to salt cod is just one corner of the ambitious family market, but it perfectly represents the store’s mission to serve the local Portuguese community and to celebrate and share the culinary heritage of Portugal.

Benevides was born in 1977 on São Miguel, the largest island of the Azores, a chain of Portuguese islands more than 800 miles from the mainland. But when he immigrated to Fall River with his family at age 2, he settled into an already well-established community. The Portuguese have had a strong presence in southeastern Massachusetts since the 19th century, when many immigrated for jobs in the booming whaling and textile industries. Both of his parents worked in Fall River’s textile mills, and his father started a small import business on the side out of their garage. After word of the operation spread among the Portuguese community, he moved into a larger warehouse space to focus on Portugalia full time.

For its first 25 years, their customer base was almost entirely Portuguese. But Benevides became convinced that Portugalia could reach a larger audience. When a former textile mill came up for sale, Benevides envisioned something to rival international markets in New York like Sahadi’s, Zabar’s, or Eataly. But first he had to convince his father that quadrupling square footage and bringing a design-conscious shop to a small former mill town was a sound business decision.

RELATED: 6 Portuguese Pantry Staples We Can’t Stop Using

Serendipitously, Benevides’ plans for expansion coincided with a boom in Portuguese tourism from the U.S., and, with it, an increase in Portuguese cultural literacy and enthusiasm among non-Portuguese Americans. These days, Portugalia is humming. There are shelves of high-quality olive oils, tinned fish, jams, and the country’s largest selection of Portuguese wine. There are heaps of locally produced Azorean breads, like massa sovada (similar to challah) and bolos (fluffy disks similar to English muffins), alongside piles of smoky chouriço, linguiça, and morcela (blood sausage).

“I wanted to create a place,” he says, “where people would feel like, ‘Okay, wow, this is a really different representation of Portugal than we’re used to seeing.’ ”

The post How America’s Best Portuguese Market Ended Up in a Small Town in Massachusetts appeared first on Saveur.

There was a time when the only place you might encounter a thicket of invasive Japanese knotweed or a tangle of pokeweed was while bushwacking in the urban or rural wilds. While most weeds will be left to languish in the wilderness, there is a growing awareness that many of these unruly plants—usually a blight to farmers and home gardeners—have something in common: They can be quite good to eat. This spring, bundles of tender, young knotweed and pokeweed shoots will be appearing tentatively at greenmarkets. Along with wild cresses, aggressive onions, rampant mugwort, and habitat-altering autumn berries, they represent a steadily rising tide of edibles-formerly-known-as-weeds becoming available to cooks.

Thanks to foragers, attendant trending hashtags like #wildfoodlove, and the emerging practice of what I call conservation foraging (focusing on sustainable harvest practices and the collection of invasive species), many weeds that landowners battle on their lawns are the same ingredients appearing on restaurant menus, in CSA boxes, and at the market.

As the audience for culinary weeds grows, farmers are poised to take advantage of this potential income. But little information is yet available on how weeds function as marketable crops. One farmer-forager recognizing this gap in knowledge is Russian-born Tusha Yakovleva, who lives in the Hudson River Valley. Her guide for farmers, Edible Weeds from Farm to Market, is funded by the Sustainable Agriculture and Research program. Its aim is to educate and empower farmers who wish to add invasive edibles to their harvest lists. My own book, Forage, Harvest, Feast: A Wild-Inspired Cuisine (Chelsea Green), caters to the receiving end of the wild supply chain—the curious cook and chef—by providing hundreds of recipes for preparing weeds and wild plants at home.

But for now, here is a list of 10 choice edible weeds appearing in greenmarkets, with a rundown of what to expect from them.

Editor’s note: This story is intended merely to show you a selection of edible weeds; we don’t recommend you go outside and start tossing foraged greens into a salad bowl. Some of these may resemble other plants that are poisonous to humans, so if you’re not sure what kind of plant you’re looking at, leave it alone.

Autumn Olive, Elaeagnus umbellata

Farmer Faith Gilbert, of Letterbox Farm, includes the sour crimson fruits of autumn olive (also called autumn berries), in early autumn CSA boxes in Hudson, NY. They are as tart as red currants and can be used in similar ways. Their high lycopene content can cause jams to separate, but their color and flavor invigorate sweet and savory sauces and fruit leathers.

Burdock, Arctium lappa

Peeled burdock stems are crisp and versatile. “Everyone loves them as soon as they try them,” says Avery McGuire, of Thalli Foods near Ithaca, NY, who began selling the late-spring stems to chefs and farmers-market shoppers after reading Samuel Thayer’s Forager’s Harvest. She suggests dipping them into hummus, or braising them. Burdock’s cold-season taproot (better known as gobo) is a substantial, starchy vegetable that takes well to slow, moist cooking.

Chickweed, Stellaria media

With its appealing flavor of nutty corn silk, spring chickweed is a delicacy best appreciated raw. Its tender stems, leaves, and flowers are ideal fillers for summer rolls and a gentle bed for seared seafood.

Dandelions, Taraxacum officinale

Familiar dandelions are the gateway plant to eating weeds. “I may be the only person who gets excited about dandelions in my hayfield,” says Mary Carpenter of Violet Hill Farm, near Albany, NY, who sells them in New York City’s Union Square. With crisp rosettes in late winter, mild leaves and succulent stalks in spring, and assertive flavor in summer, dandelions’ evolving profile makes them appealing throughout their growing season.

Field Garlic, Allium vineale

Prolific field garlic (also called lawn chives, or wild garlic) is sold in neat bunches at New York City greenmarkets by New Jersey–based Lani’s Farm, an outfit known for offering flavorful weeds in pristine condition. The little wild onions fetch $3 a bunch. If you have ever foraged and cleaned field garlic you will appreciate the bargain. The bulbs and leaves are a sustainable—if diminutive—alternative to vulnerable native ramps (Allium tricoccum).

Garlic Mustard, Alliaria petiolata

Spreading thousands of seeds after flowering, biennial garlic mustard inspires ecological ire. Edible in its entirety, the plant offers second-year roots tasting like horseradish (in contorted miniature), leaves that are a gustatory marriage of broccoli rabe, mustard, and garlic, and budding stems in late spring that are an ephemeral delicacy. “The biggest issue is the short window of readiness,” says Mary Carpenter: Garlic mustard’s bud season is brief, and customer education takes time. Be ready.

Japanese knotweed, Reynoutria japonica

Also offered by Violet Hill Farm, Japanese knotweed is notoriously invasive, but also delicious. It will definitely become more familiar as a market vegetable in years to come. Its mid-spring shoots resemble asparagus, but taste and behave like an earthier, more vegetal version of rhubarb crossed with fresh sorrel. Use it raw or cooked, especially in savory dishes that need a sour boost.

Mugwort, Artemisia vulgaris

Mugwort’s feathery leaves are packed with a sage-like fragrance that is wildly versatile in the kitchen. Author and wild foods purveyor Tama Matsuoka Wong says they are “awesome as tempura.” She supplies mugwort and other edible invasives to Fresh Direct, under the name Meadows and More. From its first shoots through to its winter stalks (which can be used as kebab skewers), this under-appreciated herb is about to experience a slow-burn renaissance.

Pokeweed, Phytolacca americana

Known as poke sallet in the South, this indigenous but prolific plant was originally eaten by Native Americans. It is a succulent spring vegetable when blanched in ample boiling water, but it must never be eaten raw. Pokeweed’s notoriety stems from livestock poisonings or improper preparation: Animals that graze on the mature plant or snout out its toxic rhizome can grow sick and die; unripe fruit and uncooked green parts are also toxic to humans. But once blanched, young poke shoots are delectable.

Wintercress, Barbarea verna & B. vulgaris

The early-season alternative to watercress, wintercress (also called creasy greens, wild cress, or upland cress) is a land dweller whose leafy heat is reminiscent of wild arugula. Later in spring, wintercress stems shoot up, bearing acid yellow flowers. These tender morsels, like baby broccolini, are a prime and ephemeral spring ingredient.

The post These 10 Invasive Plant Species Are Surprisingly Delicious appeared first on Saveur.

Along the winding streets of La Paz, through a hidden alleyway and down a dim market corridor, a butcher wields a cleaver, bringing it swiftly down upon a glistening slab of scarlet beef. Another butcher lifts a swollen aubergine heart, nestling it carefully atop a heap of other hearts. Yet another lays medallions of blushing pink pork along a stall window as if arranging gemstones at a jeweler’s counter. A fourth smiles warmly through a curtain of mottled sausages, her teeth enrobed in gold, a bowler hat tilted back upon the crown of her head. These carnicerías are part of the patchwork of vendors who run the stalls at Mercado Rodriguez, La Paz’s central food market. A city of dizzying altitude (12,000 feet, more than twice as high as Denver) carved into the base of Bolivia’s Altiplano, La Paz and its neighboring city El Alto were settled by the Spanish but remain densely populated with indigenous people of Aymara, Quechua, and other Amerindian descent. As of 2018, 60 percent of Bolivia’s population identifies as indigenous. The Mercado Rodriguez’s vendors, including the carnicerías, consist mainly of cholitas, an affectionate name for Bolivia’s indigenous women, who dress in swishing layered skirts, Technicolor shawls, and jaunty hats. From pre-dawn sometimes until early evening, these produce purveyors, food-cart doñas, and cheesemakers sit awaiting their regular clients or curious passersby. Potatoes and tubers in a spectrum of colors and sizes, bouquets of herbs, and cabbages as plump as toddlers’ cheeks overflow from each stand. On Sundays, the stalls spill into the hilly streets surrounding the indoor market, and even more cholitas sell their wares in the brisk, wintry-feeling air.

Perhaps, at first, this Sunday-morning tableau does not seem distinct from any other market scene in the world: vendors arranging lettuces, frying chicken parts, stacking wheels of dense white criollo cheese, passing the time with a cup of maté. But the key detail is that all of the vendors are women. They are cooking. They are selling. They are setting and negotiating prices for items they may have also farmed. They are keeping the city’s kitchens and restaurants stocked and running.

Lorenza Chuquimia, a ruddy woman in a blue beanie, sits on a pallet among her vegetables as if upon an altar. She’s been working at the market for 15 years. “I have a lot of relationships here,” she says. Her customers know her by name and seek her out each week. “Men don’t know how to sell,” she says candidly. “Here, the women are humble. Everyone is a friend.” Nearby, another woman with a heart-shaped face and a cloudy left eye, Juliana Mamani, explains the minutiae of lettuce transport; it must be packed in grass to keep from bruising. “We can feed the grass to the animals afterward,” she says, pulling away a limp leaf to reveal a pale green head, handling it as gently as if it were a newborn.

Through the maze of carnicerías and up along a mezzanine, an imposing woman with voluminous braids calls out orders to an aproned girl who dishes up bowls of sopa de mani (peanut soup) and tin plates full of potatoes, fried cheese, fava beans, tender ingots of beef, and corn—all together called plato paceño—for a crowd of men in work clothes. A lone male employee, a boy of perhaps 7 or 8 years, stands over a tub of soapy water, attending to a growing stack of dishes.

In Bolivia, traditional gender conditioning has long intertwined sustenance together with the domestic and the feminine. But while women’s roles as farmers, sellers, and cooks award them a remarkable level of visibility and economic power, throughout the country they are still struggling for social equality and basic personal safety, especially among indigenous populations. As recently as a decade or two ago, cholitas were barred from public transport and could be refused entry to private businesses, such as hotels and restaurants. For many years, Bolivia has struggled with Latin America’s highest rates of femicide and violence, with more than half of women experiencing domestic abuse. And yet women of all socioeconomic backgrounds, from farmers to restaurant owners, continue to hold the keys to the country’s food system—increasingly wielding this knowledge and power for greater independence and equality. Among groups like Eco Tambo (the country’s first independently run organic farmers market) and MIGA (a food sustainability organization that holds women’s symposiums), and individual women forging businesses, the engine of Bolivia’s food economy is fueled by females.

The Teacher

Dina Mamani watches her students from a corner of Manq’a’s steamy kitchen. About two dozen people in chef whites survey bowls of chopped onions, mote (Andean corn), a smattering of green herbs, and a list of instructions. This branch of Manq’a (which means “food” in the Aymara language) is in a quiet neighborhood of El Alto. Lording atop the Altiplano at 13,600 feet, El Alto is a 20-minute vertiginous cable-car ride up the mountain from La Paz.

Manq’a is a culinary-education program with 12 schools (10 in Bolivia, two in Colombia), and Mamani is one of its lead instructors. She’s teaching a five-month certificate program to low-income and underprivileged students seeking the skills to work in restaurants or the food industry. She’s been involved in the project for four years, since its introduction by Melting Pot—a nonprofit founded by Claus Meyer, the Danish chef who also opened Gustu, an upscale restaurant, to make elevated use of the region’s bountiful and unique produce. Manq’a is free to those who are accepted, and provides courses in culinary and leadership training, business and entrepreneurship skills, and gender issues. Part of Mamani’s job is to empower her students with a knowledge and awareness of Bolivia’s incredible agricultural diversity (it’s one of the most biodiverse countries in the world), and help them create new and inspiring jobs within agriculture and the culinary arts.

Formerly a chef at a reputable Indian restaurant in La Paz, Mamani has taught hundreds of men and women who sometimes travel upwards of two hours each way to attend. Thus far, 3,500 students have graduated from Manq’a, 70 percent of whom have been women. About 150 students have gone on to start their own businesses, 60 percent of these opened by women. Soon, Mamani will be opening Manq’a’s first school in Sucre, Bolivia’s second capital city. “This place always feels like family,” Mamani says. “I’m grateful that Manq’a has trusted me from the beginning.”

The Entrepreneur

Remedios Ramirez—out of breath after a lunch rush—wears a newsboy hat over her dark hair and a red sweater, nearly the same color as the freshly painted cinder-block walls in her bustling restaurant, Sabrosito. After graduating from the Manq’a culinary school, Ramirez returned to her mother’s lunch stall to help invigorate the business. Seven years before, her mother, Fortunata, a cholita with long braids and a flowered apron, had begun cooking for the public when her husband abandoned her, Ramirez, and her two brothers. Now, she shuffles out to serve customers in the sunlight.

Ramirez, who is now 30, discovered at Manq’a that she has a knack for business, which she used to brand her mother’s previously unnamed space, making it a more permanent establishment. She developed a new breakfast clientele from passengers traveling through the nearby bus station. “At school I learned how to re-evaluate Bolivian food, to have a new vision,” she says. “I felt I could be creative.” Creativity is not a given in a place where food and culture are as deeply codified as they are in the Altiplano, and where ingredients—corn, potatoes, meat—have been farmed and cooked mostly for subsistence. Dishes are protected from outside influence thanks to Bolivia’s impenetrable terrain and lack of coastline. But Ramirez’s sense of empowerment is a feeling several students of Manq’a mention experiencing.

Before retiring for the day, she delivers to a customer a bowl, sloshing full of sopa de arroz (rice soup), and a plate of falso conejo (“false rabbit,” actually a pile of sautéed beef over rice) with chuño (a freeze-dried Andean potato), ají chile sauce, and salsa. “This is my mother’s recipe,” Ramirez explains. “It’s cooked all over Bolivia. But what changes is the hands.” She gestures toward the door, referencing the hundreds of unnamed lunch stalls and street carts run by women that dapple the streets of El Alto and La Paz—but also her budding legacy within it.

The Farmer

In the middle of a park in the Sopocachi neighborhood of La Paz, Norah Ramos Santavita Villalobos presides over a vegetable stand. Her offerings—carrots, potatoes, greens—are arranged in neat rows, and she takes a break on a nearby bench to chat. Villalobos is one of the founders of Eco Tambo, the first self-managed organic farmers market in Bolivia.

“We started Eco Tambo three years ago in a house nearby,” Villalobos says. She explains that she and some other women from El Alto wanted to bring their vegetables to a market that might appreciate responsibly grown produce. At first, because the vendors had little visibility—they were sequestered indoors, rather than selling in a public space—the market struggled. Eventually, organizers who had previous experience in agricultural systems came on board, as did the neighborhood’s president, securing a nearby square for a weekly market. Today, Eco Tambo is a vibrant community center.

“I can depend on myself,” Villalobos says before rising from her break. She recounts how her husband told her to leave her farm, but she resisted. Traditionally, farming is a responsibility shared by the entire family. It’s an art that was taught to Villalobos by her grandfather, and one she has passed on to her six children. A quiet girl sitting next to her listens closely, swinging her legs along the bench. “She’s my best helper,” Villalobos says, and the little girl glances up proudly but is also a bit shy of the attention. “Women need to feel empowered,” Villalobos says. “They need to stop pretending that their husbands or men have all the say.”

The Chef

Tall and lithe, her face glowing beneath industrial lights, Marsia Taha strides to the pass with anticuchos—in this case, thinly sliced beef heart skewered to tiny potatoes—that have been seared atop a sizzling pink salt rock. A native Bolivian, Taha is the head chef at Gustu, the unlikely World’s 50 Best–nominated restaurant that opened in 2013. In many ways, Gustu put Bolivia on the map as a rising food destination, illuminating the country’s untapped culinary potential and biodiversity. Taha has been there from its beginning. After working at both Studio and Geist, two lauded restaurants in Copenhagen, she returned home to La Paz to work as a sous chef.

“I come here to forage a lot,” she says the next afternoon while navigating the dirt roads east of La Paz that overlook a valley of potato fields. The Valle de las Animas (Valley of Souls) is a bowl-shaped pasture surrounded by needlelike crags. Winter has faded the otherwise vibrant chaparral, but Taha finds several varieties of koa, a shrubby aromatic herb, and muña, another herb used to aid digestion. From a distance, Illimani—a massive Andean peak—is shrouded, a hint of snow trickling below the cloud line. “You know Pachamama, right?” Taha asks. “Mother Earth. She’s not just nature, though. She’s the trees and the rocks. Everything you see here.” Even the land—in particular, the agricultural aspect—is considered to be in the feminine domain.

Taha is one woman among a growing crop for whom running an elevated kitchen or owning a high-end food business is entirely possible. Moreover, that these women now have the ability to circulate among and be recognized by chefs’ circles globally is a major step not only for women in the country, but for Bolivian food. As its women flourish, so does La Paz. It’s easy to overlook, but La Paz’s full name is Nuestra Señora de La Paz: Our Lady of Peace. And she has always been here, feeding her city.

Faces of La Paz

Cholitas

A name for indigenous Bolivian women (altered from the Spanish chola, which carries a derogatory connotation), cholitas are today highly visible on the streets of El Alto and La Paz. Many wear bowler hats (whose style, brand, and adornment with jewelry or brooches often indicate economic status), tiered skirts, long braids, and many-colored shawls, which they use to carry children or packages. Some women opt to have their teeth enrobed in or replaced with gold, a trend that denotes wealth. Cholitas, who were once considered lower-class citizens and not even allowed to occupy some squares and gathering places, now hold public office, own businesses, perform in their own wrestling league, and host radio and television shows. Though his clench on power has drawn criticism and concern, President Evo Morales—the first indigenous person elected to office—is often credited with renewing pride in Bolivia’s indigenous people and traditions.

The post These Powerful Women Run Bolivia’s Food System appeared first on Saveur.

SAVEUR editors and contributors have a pretty well-documented love of produce. Between the SAVEUR Market Report and all our many produce guides, it’s clear we’ve got a bit of a thing for the good garden stuff. And what better time to go produce-crazy than summer? If we go to a summer farmers’ market, we’re definitely coming back with tomatoes, cucumbers, peaches, cherries, strawberries—as much as we can carry and then some. If you’re looking for some inspiration for you summer produce haul, we’ve got just what you need. From savory tomato pies to simple grilled squash, here’s a list of what we’re making with all our favorite summer produce.

Roasted and Fresh Tomato Pie

Fried Anchovy-Stuffed Zucchini Blossoms

Pan Fried Eggplant With Capers and Basil

Summer Succotash Salad

Japanese-Style Swiss Chard and Sesame Salad

Melon Butter

Grilled Strawberries

Grilled Squash and Scallions with Chile-Honey Vinaigrette

Blackberry-Plum Lattice Pie

Watermelon Gazpacho

Grilled Shallots with Dill (Schalottenlök i Folie)

Tomato and Cucumber Salad With Fennel Dressing

Asian Greens with Garlic Sauce

Raspberry Brûlée

Summer Bolognese

The post 15 Summer Recipes to Make From Farmers’ Market Finds appeared first on Saveur.

It’s Saturday evening nearing midnight, and while tourists are swinging back their last splash of rum before calling it a night at one of the many beachside resorts dotting the Caribbean island of Saint Lucia, Sylvia Baptiste’s day is just getting started.

Six days a week she makes her way into the capital city of Castries to the enormous open-air market, down a narrow alleyway that by midday is bustling with merchants selling the day’s catch of seafood, local spices, and fresh fruit. In her small kitchen stall, Sylvia’s Place, she’ll prep noodles with salt fish and vegetables, beef bouillon, cocoa tea, and other local favorites before sunrise to sell throughout breakfast and lunch.

The market, which opened back in 1894, is home to several family-run businesses that have lasted multiple generations, all proud and passionate to share their taste of the Caribbean with those looking to try. Here’s a taste of daily life there.

I’m taking a break from the tropical sun at the counter of my new friend Nick’s colorfully painted vegetarian food shack, Mokocho’s. His Rastafarian father (the Mochoko in Mochoko’s) opened shop 20 years ago, and Nick joined in 2002. Mochoko’s day starts at midnight; Nick’s at 2 a.m. They cook most of their menu in their home kitchen, transporting roti, fried plantain stews, and pizza to the shack for lunch It hasn’t always been easy, but the dedicated duo now enjoy having a family business that allows them to do what they love.

With her warm laugh and generous servings, Sylvia is the Caribbean mother you always wanted. She’s spent the last 19 years of her life feeding those who find their way to Sylvia’s Place, but her love for cooking started much earlier. She recalls preparing her first dish of chicken and rice around the age of 11; it quickly became a family favorite.

Jacinta Williams, who St. Lucia’s Small Business Awards recently named vendor of the year for her commitment to selling quality produce to visitors and locals, has been at the market for 21 years (since she was 7). She first started helping her mother, who now runs a textile booth next door, and eventually branched off with her own stall. On Sundays, the family often cooks together for the church, preparing pulled pork with soursop fish, avocado salad, and fish with split peas.

Across the way from Sylvia’s, this stall’s daily menu includes beef bouillon, stewed turkey, rice, potato salad, and macaroni and cheese.

Turn the corner to the fish market you’re immediately approached by several vendors eager to capture your attention. Hanging out by the waterfront with their handpainted barrels and Instagrammable displays of the latest catch, they split their days negotiating with fisherman and cutting fish for customers. Peter Butche has an intense gaze that instantly catches my eye; I snap photos in between a casual conversation with his cousin, who comes to visit the market often. Peter, born and raised in Saint Lucia, has been involved with fishing and the market since he was eight years old.

It doesn’t take long to feel like a local around here. By my second visit to the market, several vendors recognized my face and opened up to talk for hours; we still keep in touch through What’s App. It’s hard to ignore the pride they take in their work; it’s even harder to ignore how good all the food tastes.

The post Why You Should Skip St. Lucia’s Tourist Spots to Wander Through its Central Market appeared first on Saveur.

If you want to understand life in Athens, you have to understand the Central Market. Walk down just about any major road downtown and you’ll find your way to an entrance, where you’ll see people from across the city tote their carts from one stand to the next, arguing in Greek over prices and quality. For a minute, it’s possible to block out the various crises that Greece has become known for and find the essence of how the people here live and eat.

The actual market, which locals call the Dimotiki Agora or sometimes the Nea Agora, sits inside a glass-roofed building, installed two years after the original market burned down in 1884. And the action starts early. At 7 a.m., you’ll find mostly Greeks pushing wheeled bags, stall owners holding frappes, and pigeons. By 9, I had more room to wander between the stalls, though that didn’t stop me from slipping on some mysterious fish juice and bouncing like a pinball between the vendors.

How to eat, cook, and hunt for octopus like a local

The produce stalls make Greece’s reputation for great food abundantly clear. The fruits and vegetables you find there—what seems like everything, though of course the stalls only stock what’s in season—are just more vivid than you’re used to. I saw some of the biggest, most beautiful pomegranates there, as well as figs, tomatoes, and peppers. I could smell how ripe everything was, ready to go directly into a Greek salad. The vegetable section somehow transitioned into a series of knick-knack filled stalls like the Big Bazaar, which shimmers with all of the mirrors, pots, and instruments hanging from the awning. It probably took me about 30 minutes to maneuver my way through precariously stacked mountains of treasure to the back, but the journey was worth it.

Then there are the spices. Bag after bag of oregano, lavender, dried basil, thyme, peppermint, and mixes with names like “Salad mix” were stacked high in storefront shelves. As I moved past that, under the glass ceiling, I started to get to the meats and fish. Whole animals hang upside down, all parts present except for an epidermis. In the fish aisle, glassy eyed tuna and anchovies stared at me as I walked past. I even spotted an aisle of the market that appeared to be home to several mesh bags of giant crabs. I barely resisted scoring a few bags of gorgeous anchovies—my favorite thing to fry up and eat one after another, like french fries.

If you want to take a break to eat something while you’re in the market, most people at the market will recommend you stop at the Epirus Tavern, which sits inside the actual market building, hidden among the butchers. It’s open early, so if you arrive before the market opens, you can still sit with a meal and wait for vendors to arrive and watch Athenians be Athenians.

Beyond the market building, go hunting for dairy, especially Στρούγκας του Μωριά (Strougkas tou Moria), a cheese shop that displays block after block of enticing briny feta. I tried a slice off a brick that was described to me by some Greek food-loving friends as the “most authentic feta,” made with a mix of sheep and goat milk, instead of just sheep’s milk or the cow’s milk we’re more accustomed to in the U.S. The brine tastes fresher, the texture is richer, and the goat character is unmistakable.

After cheese there’s salami. The tiny shop Arapian has so many hunks of cured meat hanging from the ceiling that it’s easy to get overwhelmed, but my Greek buddies suggest starting with pastourma. Thinly sliced, and lots of it.

Pastourma is an air-dried cured meat like bresaola that’s spread throughout the Mediterranean and seems to have as many names as eaters. It used to be made with camel, and in some places it probably still is, but in Greece it’s mostly beef. Hop back and forth between Arapian and Strougkas and you have a mobile meat and cheese platter than can entertain you for hours.

Later in the afternoon, I made my way back to the market for my final stop, and the one that I was looking forward to the most. Diporto sits in the basement of a building near the market, but you’d never know it was there if you weren’t looking for it (or if you didn’t hear the sound of Greek music floating up from the stairs). There are no signs and no windows—just rusty doors that open to steep staircases leading to what is some amazing food in a secret place. There’s also no menu—you eat whatever the kitchen has made for the day. When I was there, that included rice in a tomato sauce with a giant hunk of tender meat in the middle, some fava, a salad, and lots of wine, all of which was fantastic.

But what’s best about this place is the atmosphere. Barrels stacked two high line one of the walls, which may seem like an aesthetic choice until you realize those barrels are actually filled with the wine the restaurant serves. It’s smoky and loud and full of Greeks. I sat at a table by myself, but this only lasted a few minutes before I was pulled to the table next to mine, where a group of 12 Greek men and women were singing loudly along with an accordion player. After telling them in broken (but wine-enhanced) Greek that I used to live in Thessaloniki, we belted out “Omorfi Thessaloniki” (“Beautiful Thessaloniki”) over glasses of wine that seemed to magically fill after each song. This is the reason to live in a city like Athens in a country like Greece. Or at least to visit the main market.

The post If You Want to Understand Greek Food, You Have to Visit Athens’ Central Market appeared first on Saveur.

Plan a trip to Barcelona and chances are you’ll receive a short list of recommendations about places you have to see: the Picasso museum, Gaudi’s epic Sagrada Familia, a walk on Las Ramblas, and of course the Boqueria market—the Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria, to be precise. For the food-obsessed, the sprawling Boqueria is a more than worthy destination, with centuries of history and lane after lane of stalls selling virtually everything you can eat in Spain. And as one of the most tourist-trafficked markets in the world, it’s almost perpetually mobbed. As we set out on a local market excursion, chef Mauro Ciccarelli of Arola at the Hotel Arts admits that many chefs stop there to load up when their suppliers fall short, too.

The same isn’t the case with Barcelona’s 40 or so other public markets, which date back to the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In truth, Barcelona is a city of markets, and compared to the impressive-if-forbidding Boqueria, many of the smaller ones are steeped in even more local charm.

In the middle and late 20th century, many of Barcelona’s public markets fell into disuse as mass-produced food and supermarkets became the norm. But with the greater demand for organic produce at the turn of the 21st century, Spain progressively set aside what is now the largest area dedicated to organic farming in the European Union, spawning a renewed pride overall in fresh, local ingredients. With a big economic push from city officials to revitalize the aging structures, many markets underwent facelifts to become renewed and vital neighborhood centers. Ciccarelli guides us toward one such market—Mercat Del Ninot—where locals shop lazily on a quiet Monday morning. As we casually wander, he points out commonalities in the market scene today.

Each market has several fish and meat stalls, where products are labeled with area of origin. Astounding varieties of dry beans and lentils sit in massive bags and baskets, ready to be weighed out by the pound. Legs of jamon Iberico hang from hooks or await slicing at many a stall, where links of spicy, smoked sausage lay alongside in abundance (all in the chorizo vein).

There’s cheese aplenty, too. And stands of fresh melon, plums, tiny pears, peaches, and tomate de ramallet—the small, grainy tomatoes used only for pa amb tomaquet (Catalan tomato toast)—are particularly hearty in the late summer months.

But each market contains its own gems as well, be it a particular stand or an experience of Catalonian culture that has survived modernization. And while it may be hard to determine whether the first language spoken will be Catalan or Spanish, most vendors open up to friendly inquiry or, at worst, give you the space to flounder until you finish your order.

Word to the wise: Some of these markets close for a few hours mid-afternoon, and seasonal hours vary, so make sure you have your watch synchronized. Bring cloth bags—you won’t be offered plastic. And don’t expect whole-bean coffee stalls or a quick iced coffee to be found anywhere; for a country with a rich coffee culture, most people use mass-produced grounds, and if requesting something cold you’ll be given a cup with an ice cube alongside your espresso or latte.

Here are five great local markets to visit for a taste of Barcelona beyond the Boqueria.

Mercat del Ninot

Built in 1933 on land used as a market since the late 19th century, the Mercat del Ninot underwent a massive and stunning revitalization in 2015. Though it looks completely modern, it still retains some of its original purveyors like the xarcuteria Alonso Andres. Stop at Ous de Calaf for an impressive collection of eggs from quail, ostrich, turkey, and many breeds of chicken, all sitting out in their non-refrigerated, happy glory. At Porta Novau, find a colorful variety of dry goods like dehydrated fruit or roasted nuts for snacking, along with beans, pastas, and oils.

While many markets are flanked by small restaurants and bars that serve market fare, Ninot was rebuilt with these spaces in mind, so come hungry and grab a bite at Restaurant la Cuina del Ninot, Bar Jyp, Bar David del Ninot, and more. Eating at one of them exceptional way to meet locals, scope out what they’re eating, and then order the same.

Carrer de Mallorca, 133

Mercat de L’Abaceria Central

Built in 1892, the L’Abaceria Central is one of the city’s oldest markets and, as it hasn’t been restored, retains a more roughshod look in a working-class neighborhood passed over by most tourists. All stalls bustle during busy hours, selling slabs of dried cod, fresh meat, dried mushrooms, and canned fish. But locals visit on quiet mornings, too, taking a break for a sip of coffee or breakfast at Bar Parera before wandering outside for clothing, books, tchotchkes, and inexpensive electronics. Take in the market’s relaxed energy and pretend you live nearby.

Travessera de Gracia, 186

Mercat de la Llibertat

Opened in 1888 and now completely modernized, the Mercat de la Llibertat sits in the Vila de Gracia, surrounded by stalls selling clothes, books, and flowers. Inside, stock up on thin slices of meat and cheese at xarcuteria Bragulat, then jars of cured olives, hearts of palm, and artichokes at Helbig, where the patient purveyor takes his time with you. Then run like a kid in a candy store to La Grana, a third-generation family stall that sells a dizzyingly colorful variety of candied and dried fruit, wood-roasted hazelnuts and almonds, Catalonian nuts, and high-end chocolates.

Plaça Llibertat, 27

Mercat de la Concepció

Set within the Modernist-style buildings of the upscale La Dreta de l’Eixample neighborhood, built in 1888 and stunningly revitalized in the late 1990’s, Concepció is such a community staple that it’s hard to find meat or good produce in any major supermarket nearby. But meat this market has aplenty, with several xarcuterias offering a plethora of sliced cured meats to order, prepared packages of jamon, salsitxa, and chorico, and stalls that specialize only in fresh cuts of chicken, beef, pork, or lamb. Once outside, wander through the flower stalls to lunch at Sopa de Pedres where, for around 15 Euro, you can get a daily three-course prix-fixe meal of fresh market finds.

Carrer d’ Aragó, 313-317

Mercat de Santa Caterina

Nestled in the Old Town part of the city, Santa Caterina (named after the Dominican convent that once stood there) was the first covered market in the city and has been continually revitalized, with Guadi-esque mosaic roof tiles and a vaulting interior of warm wood beams set high in the ceiling. Inside, there are five stalls selling eggs alone, three reserved for olives and canned vegetables, and endless options for fish, meat, and produce. There’s also a modern supermercat inside for household items, and a pharmacy.

Avenue de Francesc Cambó, 16

More Barcelona information available at Mercats de Barcelona.

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Are you going to see any night markets?

Tell travelers you’re visiting Taiwan and, New Taiwan Dollars to Taiwanese doughnuts, that’s the question they ask you. The island’s reputation for night markets is so great that, at times, it eclipses all other aspects of the country’s multifaceted cuisine. After all, this is a country that makes one of the world’s greatest breakfasts and has a fine tea culture to rival China and Japan; it’s a challenge to eat poorly here, whether you’re slurping superlative soup dumplings in Taipei or snacking on rare mountain greens in the countryside.

But hey, if you’re visiting Taiwan, chances are you will in fact be hitting some night markets, perhaps even by accident as you wander down the streets of Taipei and come upon a skewer-wielding fried chicken artist next to a hawker furiously scrambling oyster omelets. The markets are, in truth, great fun. They’re also, for the uninitiated, totally overwhelming, crowded, and noisy with little signage and lots of food. Where do you start eating? How do you know what’s good? And why are they such a thing in Taiwan?

It helps to have a guide. Consider these tips your starting point.

So What Exactly is a Night Market?

In brief: a regular market that pops up at night, when locals can shop and snack and gather. Vendors sell all sorts of goods, from clothes and accessories to produce and drinks, but food is certainly a big draw. In a country where alcohol and bars aren’t monolithic cultural fixtures, night markets play an essential role in nightlife, anchoring not just hungry Taiwanese, but whole communities and, in larger cities, specific neighborhoods. The markets can run quite late into the night, with food built for snacking—a roving buffet.

But…Don’t Expect All the Food to Be Fantastic

Yes, it is hard to eat poorly in Taiwan—7 Eleven and Family Mart are convenience stores from heaven, and even supermarket produce is pretty excellent—but, to be honest, night markets are far from the pinnacle of great eating. Some are better than others, but the average quality of stalls may very well be…average. A lot of romantic myth-making says otherwise, but if you want to eat the best of Taiwanese food, head to family-run restaurants and specialist shops. The street food is often quite good, but better to keep your expectations moderate and appreciate the sheer variety of what you can eat.

Where to Start

The common street food adage applies: follow your nose—and the crowd. Night market hawkers specialize in particular foods—fried chicken, stinky tofu, pork belly buns, fish-your-own-shrimp (more on that in a minute)—and locals tend to know which specialists are the best. You won’t always find orderly queues, but you won’t have to shove. And if you’re clueless about what a hawker makes, ask! Taiwanese hospitality is, to put it mildly, incredibly generous, and most strangers are more than happy to help you out if you show a genuine interest in the food.

A few staples you’ll find pretty much everywhere: fried chicken, popcorn-style to peck at with skewers, insanely good with sugar, chile, and pepper in the breading and plenty of aromatic Thai basil thrown in for good measure; gua bao, steamed buns filled with anise-braised pork belly, pickled greens, and shaved peanut brittle; the famous stinky tofu, which smells way more pungent than it tastes, but announces its presence from half a block away; whole stands full of skewered stuff, from chicken to sausage to squid to blood cakes, which you pile into plastic baskets and hand to a cook to fry or grill for you. But keep an eye out for regional specialties—Taiwanese cooking is a many splendored thing, with impressive variation from city to city.

As for specific night markets to visit, the editors of Wikipedia, bless their hearts, have compiled a particularly impressive nationwide list.

Hit the Small Ones

When it comes to night markets, bigger doesn’t mean better. More options, sure, but not necessarily superior quality, and certainly more crowds. Smaller night markets also offer a more distinctive look into a local community, and if you head out of the cities and into small town Taiwan, you’re in for a treat, because there night markets become the nightlife thing, a block party meets county fair with some excellent blood kebabs for good measure. It was at a tiny town in central Taiwan’s Nantou County where I encountered a night market game of “catch your dinner”: little kids with fishing poles hooking live shrimp from a tank, skewering them, and gathering around a tiny grill to cook them right then and there. Small town night markets: fun for the whole family.

And When All Else Fails

Hit the claw games. Taiwanese people love them. And rather than having a single game with a mix of prizes, they set them up in long rows that gleam in the night, each with its own set of prizes for you to choose from. Pound back some boba tea, snack on some popcorn chicken, and try your luck.

More Taiwan

Trekking Taiwan’s Oolong Tea Trail »
Taipei is Becoming the World’s Next Great Coffee City »
How to Build a Taiwanese Pantry »

The post How to Navigate a Taiwanese Night Market appeared first on Saveur.

The Census Bureau estimates that half of the 2.3 million people who live in Queens were born outside the United States. Over 100 languages are spoken daily on its streets. Such dizzying diversity has earned the borough a reputation as a food lover’s paradise: If the world cooks it, you can probably find someone here who makes it. And if the recipe requires an obscure ingredient from home, there’s a market in Queens that sells it.

For the curious home cook, it doesn’t get better than this. And for the wandering eater, there’s nothing like spending an afternoon eating through the borough without setting foot in a single restaurant. Because once your bags are loaded with yogurt and curry paste and a kilo or two of smoky sausage, you won’t just be wondering what to cook first, but how those Thai dried bananas might taste dipped in some Mediterranean honey. So do as we did: Plonk your haul down in a park and have yourself a picnic.

Despaña Brand Foods

On sunny Saturday mornings in Jackson Heights, Jose Reyes pours wine. A plastic cup of tempranillo, filled nearly to the brim, is his standard welcome at Despaña, the Spanish food importer and meat shop where he’s worked for 30 years.

Reyes now oversees the company’s sausage operation: 2,000 to 3,000 pounds a week of garlic-laced chorizo, coils of Basque chistorra, and morcilla sausage, dark and sweet as dried fruit thanks to a smart combination of cooked-down onions and coagulated pig’s blood. Come for the wine but stay for the free samples of sausage as well as bites of tinned tuna belly in olive oil and nutty Manchego cheese, to say nothing of the olive oil, sherry vinegar, and special Spanish sweets. Despaña’s retail flagship may be down in Soho, and that larger space offers a sit-down menu as well, but nothing’s quite as charming as snacking on sausage while bumping elbows with the locals here in the tiny Jackson Heights spot.

Despaña Brand Foods
86-17 Northern Boulevard, Jackson Heights
(718) 779-4971
Closed Sundays

Muncan Food Corp.

Marko Stefanovic is the third generation of Yugoslavian meat men at his family’s charcuterie shop, Muncan Food Corp., in the Greek, Italian, and Balkan neighborhood of Astoria. Muncan carries dozens of cured and smoked meats, which are so revered that, according to Marko, former Astoria residents who’ve moved as far as California travel back to Queens for a taste of proper domaca and tirola (traditional pork sausages) and parizer, a Balkan-style bologna made with pork, beef, and veal. “If you come to the U.S. from a place where these foods are normal, your holidays don’t feel like holidays without these tastes,” Stefanovic says. “We provide them.”

Hanging vines of sausage obscure the ceiling of the narrow shop, filling the air with the potent smells of smoke and pork and spice. Below, meat cutters banter in Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, and Spanish while handing customers samples of lamb prosciutto and duck pastrami. The shop’s most popular item goes by many names: jumari in Romanian, cvarci in Serbo-Croatian. In a nod to the shop’s Hispanic customers who visit specifically to buy the stuff, Muncan labels it chicharron. But this isn’t another airy pork rind: It’s the ne plus ultra of fried pig—hunks of jowl, a perfect balance of meat and fat, cooked to a resounding crisp with a satisfying chew, piled into a paper bag for convenient snacking.

Muncan Food Corp.
4309 Broadway, Astoria
(718) 278-8847

Thai Thai Grocery

Two miles away, over on Woodside Avenue in Elmhurst, is P.Noi Thai Thai Grocery. When locals seek out tongue-tingly makhwen (a relative of the Sichuan peppercorn), essential to good larb, they come to Thai Thai, where they might also pick up some chewy stink beans, pudgy like favas but far more aromatic and great stir-fried with shrimp.

The shop owner, an enthusiastic 60-year-old-going-on-24 who only goes by P.Noi, greets all visitors with the de rigueur sawadee ka and a bow and a grin. Once she starts dispensing cooking advice—this feathery herb adds an earthy lilt to soup, that sausage with the pork skin nubbins is best eaten raw—it’s easy to see why her tiny market has become an anchor for a close-knit community of Thai home cooks.

“It’s just me here running things seven days a week,” she says, barely getting out the sentence before taking another customer’s order. Folks in the neighborhood stop by for her hard-to-find imported goods and homemade snacks like khao niao ping: little packets of sweet-and-salty sticky rice molded around fudgy Thai bananas, bundled in fragrant banana leaves, and grilled for a kiss of smoke. They’re a special only available on the weekends, and on this particularly busy Saturday, they disappear minutes after hitting the shelf.

P.Noi Thai Thai Grocery
7613 Woodside Avenue, Elmhurst
(917) 769-6168

Parrot Coffee

A 10-minute ride west from Thai Thai on the elevated 7 train takes you out of Thai Town and over to Sunnyside, where Middle Eastern and Himalayan restaurants join Irish pubs on both sides of bustling Queens Boulevard. There you’ll find the flagship location of Parrot Coffee, a pan-Mediterranean market that used to sell the best baklava in the city until the Mexican guy who made it moved away.

Parrot’s got an ample coffee selection, but it’s also a go-to source for dry goods, canned foods, breads, cured meat and fish, and sweets from across the Middle East and the Balkans. The dairy selection here is unparalleled. Like ricotta? Creamy mizithra may do you one better. And if you think good feta begins and ends in Greece, the counter workers here will change your mind by gently steering you toward the varieties from Romania and Bulgaria, which satisfy a cheese lover’s deepest cravings for salt and sour and funk.

Also of interest here: homemade goat milk yogurt, with a brighter flavor than yogurt made with cow’s milk and a classical Mediterranean tang absent even among fancy brands at supermarkets. And coils of flaky homemade Turkish tahini bread, tricky to locate even in dedicated Turkish bakeries, crackly and rich as croissants flattened in a waffle iron.

Parrot Coffee
Locations in Sunnyside, Astoria, and Ridgewood

Map It: One Day in Queens

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