To Market!

By Rudy Maxa

It's a picnic for the senses and a promise of daily-life authenticity.

The bounty is displayed enticingly for my careful consideration. The pomegranates are split open, their insides resembling melting rubies. A pile of brown-gold paprika is carefully molded into the shape of a pyramid. Next to it are other miniature pyramids of cinnamon, cumin, ginger, and cardamom that infuse the air with the fragrance of the East. The salesman directs my eyes to a waist-high bushel of pistachios and scoops up a handful to offer me a sample.

I am at the Spice Market in downtown Istanbul, where vendors sell products as varied as baklava (for your sweet tooth) to leeches (for your sore joints). But what's on offer in this market—housed in a 17th—century building—is much more than food and cures. Here, the products tell the story of Turkey, a country that has been occupied by conquerors from a rainbow of different cultures, from Asia to Europe.

Call me predictable, but the first place I go to in almost any city I visit is the local food market. Sometimes I make a purchase—small, wild strawberries the French call frais des bois in a market in Aix en Provence, honey at a Corsican market, olive oil in a village outside of Rome, dulce de leche in Buenos Aires, lemons the size of grapefruits at a market in Sorrento on Italy's Amalfi Coast, and grilled bananas and cacti at Bangkok’s Taling Chan floating market.

But mostly I browse because it’s an elemental, intriguing way to learn about a place.If I’m lucky, I’m in village or city where shoppers bargain for a good price—always more entertaining than a simple transaction involving a posted price. I learn local customs by watching market regulars. (Pick up a fruit or vegetable at a farmer’s market in Paris for a squeeze or sniff, for example, and you may incur the wrath of the farmer who grew them.)

I want to know what the locals eat. To walk through the Mercato Orientale in Genoa is to know just how much the they love their olives. Spanish adoration of ham—especially the hams from Ibérico—is underscored at Barcelona’s La Boqueria on La Ramblas. Every luminous, purple eggplant at the Mercato Centrale in Florence—as well as each smoked herring at the weekend market in the village of Kuressaare, Estonia—whispers to a visitor. The produce pays homage to the fertility of the surrounding land, the fish speaks of the local waters.

Local ingredients inform the recipes that shape a cuisine. Armies aren’t the only entities that move on their stomachs, as Napoleon is said to have remarked; entire peoples do, too, and how they obtain their nourishment and what they like to eat is as fascinating to me as an archaeological site or great art museum. Despite the proliferation of international brands such as McDonalds, Pizza Hut, Baskin-Robbins, and Starbucks, you’re certain to find locals and local food at a local market.

Because when you get down to it, it’s all about food, isn’t it? If we are what we eat, well, then, so are they. And while I may not relish a 1,000-year-old egg, a fat sea slug, or a slice of the less-than-fragrant Asian fruit called durian, it’s interesting that others do.

About 100 steps from the front door of where I live, in the former warehouse district of Saint Paul, Minnesota, is one of the Midwest’s best farmers' market. Vendors must produce their vegetables, fruit, meats, fish, cheeses, and other products within a 100-mile radius of the city—no fair shipping in strawberries from California. For four years now, since moving to Minnesota, I have endured long winters partly by anticipating the first crops of late spring. When the Minnesota summer finally arrives, I’m as delighted to see the exotic, Asian vegetables grown by local Hmung farmers as I am to see the corn that farmers of Scandinavian descent grow and harvest. I covet Mary’s cheese, made from the milk of her goats. I lust for the dark, rich chocolate made by the River Chocolate Company. And I'm impatient for Todd’s trout that when cooked is a rosy, red filet. Plate it with fat slices of red, green, and yellow heirloom tomatoes drizzled with olive oil and punctuated with local basil, and you have something.as gorgeous as a still-life painting.

I’m as happy to make the journey a half-block to my neighborhood market as I am prowling markets in distant places. Local vendors—wherever they may be—have a passion and connection with the land and the water that always make itself known when I eat the fruits of their labors.

Because, at the end of the day, it really is about the food, isn’t it?

Rudy Maxa, a National Geographic Traveler contributing editor, is the host and executive producer of PBS (public television) travel programs.