Food markets as rapid immersion into culture and history

By John J. Lipsey, March 2019

A roadside stand’s roasted bullfrog fresh from the field nearby, Cambodia

My wife and I love to travel, as integral to our relationship as love and friendship – we met while traveling and got to know one another over a plate of olives, a little bacalhau, and a Sagres beer.  One thing we had very much in common was our enjoyment of connecting to a new place through its food markets, halls, stalls, or stands, and local restaurant scene, what the locals recommend, and what we find that is raised, cultivated, hunted, or foraged that define and express a country’s or a region’s culinary individuality and identity.  

We cultivated a long-distance relationship after first meeting and while apart we would entertain one another on the phone or by email with virtual descriptions of where we have or might visit, like a road trip through Tuscany and Umbria, visiting olive farms and vineyards, snacking at the Mercato San Lorenzo or Sant’Abrogio, or describing a good day starting out visiting favorite vendors at San Francisco’s Ferry Building on a Saturday morning to collect picnic supplies for a hike on Mount Tam.  

Traveling on my own as a younger wayfarer, I recall the exoticness, for me, of the dried fish stalls that are about as exotic as a a candy display for others at the public market in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia. It was curiously eye-opening and nose clenching, yet evocative of parts of my own culinary history.  While dried and fermented fish was outside my repertoire at the time, I did grow up with a good exposure to where food comes from and how to eat sustainably – we raised some cattle, grew veggies, and caught lake fish on the family farm.  Of course, our main supplies came from Delchamps, A&P, IGA, or Piggly-Wiggly, which were in strip malls near our housing subdivision in Pensacola, Florida.  While I grew up properly enamored with the best of southern and cajun cuisine, a small percentage of my regular fare might have included Swanson TV dinners and brownie mix. Yet I was not far removed from the butter bean shelling and okra picking customs. Luckily a lot of what we ate also came from our farm where we hunted quail, dove, rabbit, and deer, even snipe and woodcock, which we treated as wild cousins and stocked a part of our freezer with those bright-white butcher paper packages of varying shapes. I knew our beef by the names we gave our animals when Dad bid at the auction for them, and soon learned that they went from calving to stockyard to pasture to abattoir. I was not shielded from any of that supply chain, but involved in it, in a memorable way.  I was raised on the principles of grass fed, free-range, fair chase and eat, respect, and help prosper your game animals - they are indicator species for the health of the rest of the ecosystem.  It also came from the sea which I fortunately grew up not far from – there’s many fond memories of us barefoot, shaggy-haired, over-sunned kids going to the bayou, bay, or beach, and wading with nets, or dropping traps off piers to haul in crabs or netting mullet that we would steam or fry up that night.  

That day in Kota Kinabalu, catching that tangy, pungent, not exactly appealing whiff of fish or fishiness, something slightly off, carried me back to childhood and the fresh fish markets in our Florida Gulf Coast hometown, where I remembered scrunching up my nose at the indelible odor of souring fish entrails and blood somewhere in the wharf-side concrete-floored building. Maybe ventilation, cold-storage, and air-conditionings have improved since then, since I rarely find that same odiferous scent anymore, and its hard to find even during high summer at places like Washington, DC’s floating and open-air Maine Avenue Fish Market.

Dried fish and squid stalls in public food market, Kota Kinabalu…

…and better yet, the grilled seafood vendor with tasty items skewered just off one of the boats behind him. (if photos could only be scratch and sniff…but close your eyes and your imagination can come close.)

I may have quietly worn my little brat “ewww” face tagging along to buy fish but my wish to get some fresher air was overridden by my fascination with seeing whole fish, pounds of shrimp, clams, scallops, bushels of crabs and oysters on beds of ice – the whole bounty of the sea which lay lay like a plain stretching to the horizon. The main store, Joe Patti’s has since become a local institution and tourist must-visit with a sushi bar, beignet stand, deli, and specialty food market. Do visit, but get a queue number early on from the local sheriff’s deputy who often assists managing crowds!  

A Pensacola institution, and a family tradition as well - Joe Patti’s Seafood Company market today.

Upgraded since I was young, it is one of the best places for fresh off the boat seafood since 1931.

We now always bring back tubs of fresh crabmeat as gifts for family and friends in dry-iced bags when we revisit.  This is a tradition that goes back to my grandparents, when grandmother Ursula would bring us boxed Deanie’s Seafood Restaurant crawfish on her visits from New Orleans, and Tinye and Dandy would bring pecans on visits from Mississippi. My wife and I try to keep the tradition going by bringing culinary goodies and speciality fare back from wherever we go, homage also to the Filipino tradition called Pasalubong of travelers bringing gifts to loved ones from their travels, especially a vicarious taste of where one has been.

Now, when my mind wanders over markets I rummage through memories of trips. For first impressions, I go back to being mesmerized by the hub-bub of Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market, “the beating heart of a world-class culinary capital” (CNN travel) and considered the world’s biggest seafood wholesale market – that has long been a must-see experience that astounds the first-time visitor, and savvy chef, with seafood species variety, size, and sheer quantity on offer from around the world, on palettes, in tanks, in plastic bins, in buckets, in boxes, on counters, or majestic tunas splayed out on the floors.  And even better as a tasting event, one is confident that the sushi counter is going to have the freshest possible ahi, urchin, or scallop while one eats shoulder-to-shoulder with rubber-booted, fish guts-smeared smocked market workers.  It has been a mainstay of Tokyo guidebooks for decades, and every food celebrity and chef has paid homage to it as legend, as it should be, opened in 1935.  

Unfortunately, Tsukiji was closed in 2017 and relocated to a new development, Toyusu in eastern Tokyo, not without controversy that goes with any redevelopment project.  I don’t think Tsukiji’s unique ambiance (read: messy perhaps) and authenticity will be preserved entirely, and it may well have gotten an upgrade in the new Toyusu renovated and re-development site but I think Tokyo tourism authorities know what its losing and what value the new market will have to measure up to, and I look forward to finding out for myself how they’ve implemented it, and hopefully with a dedication and devotion to sustainable harvesting from of endangered sea and its magical creatures.

Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market in earlier days, bountiful offerings, and messy daily aftermath of wholesale trading of about five million pounds of sea harvest a day.

Closed for clean-up and relocated to an eastern Tokyo site, Toyusu in 2017, it was the world’s largest wholesale fish market and a fixture of Tokyo’s world-class culinary scene.

Back in grad school days in England, I was mesmerized by the Oxford Covered Market, a central feature of the ancient city of learning reached by entrances from its High, Cornmarket, and Market Streets, names which themselves harken back to the long historical purpose as a community gathering place of the site dating back to 1770. To think that right around the corner, heretics were burned at the stake, and Lewis Carroll was dreaming up a Wonderland, and C.S. Lewis and J.R Tolkien were coming up with their Narnias and Middle-Earths in the nearby pubs while the daily fare of feeding the crowds was taking place there. I really had never seen anything like it, with its bipedaled carts stacked with rows of feathered pheasants and partridges and furred rabbits and unskinned deer carcasses, heads and sides of pigs, aproned butchers at work, along with all the fresh fruits, vegetables, and dried, stuffed, and cured charcuterie one could hope to find, along with shops, cafés, and pubs.  This was good English fare fresh from farm and field, and far afield from the styrofoam and plastic-wrapped portioned cuts of fish and meats I was used to in my Stateside Kroger or Food Lion, long before Whole Foods.  

Oxford’s Covered Market’s central square and the butcher shop with hooked hanged cured and smoked fare. Photos courtesy of https://www.oxford.gov.uk/info/20231/markets/110/oxford_covered_market/4

Oxford Covered Market butcher shop with hooked hanged cured and smoked fare, circa 2002. Photos courtesy of http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/high/tour/north/market.html.

 Later, living in San Francisco, I preferred to walk through Chinatown and shop at the local stores and markets in its narrow streets, far-removed from the Safeway that was my default food source, with their live fish, turtles, eels, and urchins, and myriad of spices, herbs, potions, and mysterious ingredients.  San Francisco’s Chinatown has always been a bit of a world within a world, one where one like me feels in a different country, unable to speak the language, and perplexed by how one goes about eating that critter, that vegetable, or that mysteriously packaged product.  I also preferred, like many San Franciscan friends, shopping at the grocery stores that catered to the Asian-heritage population, the Pacific or Manila Oriental Markets in Daly City for instance. Those were where I connected with the fresh and unadulterated and exotic that got me excited and even more curious about cooking, and where one could try weird (at the time) fish balls and fresh mung beans.  I had already been fortunate enough to be exposed to international markets when visiting family friends in Atlanta when I was growing up, and this was the getting even better.

Asian Markets

I happily found this world again as I traveled across Southeast Asia.  From the Bangkok floating markets, to its expansive Chatuchak Weekend Market, to Luang Prabang’s morning market near the mighty Mekong, to Hanoi’s Night Market, and Saigon’s Ben Thanh and Binh Tay Market’s.  My wife introduced me to the “wet” markets of her country of the Philippines, a curious adjective for me. Wet I supposed because it described the dampness due to frequent hosing down with clean water, and the heat, steam and sweat prevalent in a tropical country, where western-standards of hygiene may give way to the sloshing influx of a cornucopia of fresh food as it came and went.  I loved it. Manila does have its sanitized Rustan’s, Robinson’s, and SM HyperMarkets that can best your best Kroger or Harris Teeter’s, but it is the wet markets that really get my juices flowing, and my appetite wet, and my cooking creativity sparked.

Farmers Market Araneta Cubao, Manila – the covered main hall seen from the nearby metro station walkway.

It’s large on the inside of the market and very busy. Street food vendors are available outside as well for good meals and snacks.

Great selection of vegetables and fruits of all varieties in the Cubao Market.

Pork is popular in the Philippines, from chicheron to crispy pate to sisig, and here’s the guy to talk to.

Wide variety of seafood, including the locally-caught and very tasty national-prominent fish, lapu-lapu, named after the Filipino hero and Visayan ruler who’s soldiers killed that interloping explorer Ferdinand Magellan in the 16th century.

Whole fresh tuna makes its way to the market.

 When living in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, I would find time to explore and weave through the narrow covered stalls of wet markets ogling at the cleaning and parceling of whole fish, draining of blood for puddings, snails by the cartload, live chickens hanging upside down.  (Advice, don’t wear flip-flops.). I preferred to find the really local markets, the ones not on a tourist map and often not on any map at all, not the well-known ones like Central and Russian Markets, but the ones accessed by unmarked alleyways that led to mazes and denizens of very local vendors, and where local residents were getting their next meal, not stocking large refrigerators and freezers with prime cuts that they probably could not easily afford the electricity for anyway. 

Phnom Penh has done very well due to the influx of culinary creatives in creating a very good small business environment for fresh farm-to-table stores and it’s one of the most remarkable culinary destinations I’ve ever been to – it’s a mecca of creative and cutting edge chefs, culinary artists, restauranteurs, and sustainable farming entrepreneurs working with local farmers.  I might be less daring and buy my sushi at Aeon Mall’s Japanese-owned upscale market, as modern as any to be found, and an air-conditioned oasis on most days, along with other supplies, but I liked the local wet markets for picking up a curious shellfish or a species of crab I could never had known existed for a special dinner, or finding a new vegetable or herb I had no idea how to cook.

Phnom Penh’s Aeon Mall’s SuperMarket does have ready-to-heat-and-eat cellophaned options – in this case, blackened whole chicken, beak and all…

…and bamboo worms. Yum! Perfect snack between the latest blockbuster movies at the Aeon Cineplex or ice-skating at the upstairs ice rink.

The market offerings were a bit daunting if intriguing.  It did help that twice we sought out day-long cooking classes that began with a guided and informative morning excursion to learn what and how to pick that day’s menu’s ingredients direct from a market vendor.  We learned how to pick our fish and eel and our peppers and seasonings in Kampong Speu provinces main market and how to find our fish amok and coconut rice ingredients in Phnom Penh’s Boeung Keng Kang (BKK) Market.

Market shopping with local guide at Kampong Speu province public market at whose parents farm we would later cook and share our meal and sleep above the pig sty for added food connections!

Learning how cuisine gets is unique flavors from local spices and seasonings.

Sweeteners and rice noodles for authentic Khmer curry.

Choosing among unfamiliar fish including farm pond raised, Mekong river caught, and Gulf of Thailand caught.

Choosing fruits for dessert.

Banana leaf-wrapped fish amok, the signature dish of Cambodia, ready for steaming.

A traditional farm kitchen where we cooked our dinner with a local family.

For grinding with mortar and pestle - shallots, chiles, lemongrass, and slok ngor, an herb that gives Cambodian fish amok its distinctive taste.

Grinding away in Le Table Khmer’s classroom kitchen, the right consistency and mashing only achieved by hard work.

Some of our favorite places are in Singapore and Hong Kong. Singapore’s cultural and ethnic mix gives one a chance to explore the city on foot and by taste buds, and its hawker stalls are one of our first stops whenever there. It rivals Epcot Center for ability to sample world cuisines. Hong Kong’s dim sum trail is a foodie treasure hunt of its own. And when visiting home in the Philippines we must do the Sunday rounds at Legazpi and Salcedo Markets in Makati, greeting again the vendors and friends we always say hi to when in town.

European on-farm self-pick and pay - very farm to fork!

While I may have been wide-eyed at Asian markets, my wife was tickled and impressed by the openness of self-serve farm products we found in our beloved canton of Basel-Land, on the northwest corner of Switzerland. Here, when we walked along the wanderwegs that crisscrossed farmland and countryside of three countries that join at this last navigable port on the Rhine River, we saw the old stone border plinths that demarcated neutral Suisse, or Schweiz, from its two other neighbors, France and Germany, who had spilt much blood in wars from Spanish Succession to WWII and now allies in a united Europe.  We lived within walking distance of France’s Alsace and and the edge of Germany’s Black Forest. We encountered farms selling their products straight out of their barns, or pick-your-own straight from their fields.  Each season brought something newly ripened or harvested. There was simply a weighing scale, a pencil and notepad, and a cash box where one would weigh selections, calculate a total, and deposit your franc and/or euros in the tin.  We refueled on long walks and road trips with cheese, eggs, yogurt, sausage, vegetables, fruits, berries, and nuts, as well as sauces, ciders, wines, and got our daily supply of milk from our neighboring farmers in the upper fields we lived near.

Products from the farm within walking distance, likely coming from the goats and chickens which make good advertisers of their output just behind the fence, or coming from the cherry, plum and apple tree orchards behind the barn. It’s the honor system, just put your payment in the rusty old box.

Gathering Basel-Land’s beautiful cherries direct from the tree – pick, weigh, and deposit your francs in the orchard till anytime of day.

No need to bother the farmer or his family when hiking in the Swiss Alps, just nod thanks to the cow, open the fridge and grab some cheese or a jug of milk.

 Our local public market which one could visit before hopping on the tram home, operating for centuries in the center of Kleine Basel is the Basel Marktplatz which was long the public market area for meat, poultry, and produce, an area where butchers could work and the offal could easily drain to the Rhine. Now it is the tourist and business-person alike's choice for a a quick bite of the standby Swiss filler of cervelat sausage, bread, and mustard sandwich or more upscale offerings from food trucks and carts, a mushroom man, or a variety of ‘Bretzels’ on display outside Globus Department Store’s pricey food hall. As it turns out, to some’s chagrin, there is a Subway and a McDonald’s nearby as well which have commanding views of the market area and the eye-catching deep red-colored Rathaus, or town hall, and the bells and twang of arriving and departing green, yellow, and red trams and buses that fan out through the city and surrounding cantons from the Markplatz central location.

So when we travel, one of the first things we look for or ask about is “where is the local market?” whether in Puglia, Provence, or Phnom Penh, or even Pulaski. Even better, we find the farms and producers that share the delicious products of their hard work directly with us. This is an experience we are always eager to share and bring back home whenever we can.