Somehow, Tanger reminded me of Athens. It is called the white city due to its white Medina and buildings; it is by the sea and hilly. Indeed, some things in common.

The Marché Central de Poissons, the fish market hall with its meat section, has the same appearance of raw produce as the central market in Athens, which I blogged about. It’s just smaller and not designed with an outer ring for butchers and an inner ring for fish and seafood. The sections were just next to each other, still as clearly defined as in Athens: one section for fish, one for meat, and one for other produce like olives.

Meat section

The butcher does the cuts on site; there are apparently no ready-made pieces delivered to the market. The view brings the basics of butchering in front of the clientele. It is raw, it is uncensored, it is real. Meat here is not as abstract as in the packages one buys at the supermarket, where everything is so clean that it is hard to imagine the piece of meat you eat was once an animal that was killed.

To my surprise, I saw more beef than sheep meat. I expected the opposite, as my memories of Morocco have always focused on the great-tasting sheep meat. Well, the Marché de Poissons visit is probably not empiric enough.

One of my favorite pieces of an animal has long been the offals. I like their deep, amber taste, which always provides warmth to the body. The butchers were not short of selling them. They hung like curtains on hooks and had at times almost the same look as an abstract painting. I have to add that my passion for offals is larger than my expertise in arts.

Fish section

he focus of the Marché de Poissons is fish; for a city that is at the divide of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, it should not come as a surprise. Even though, I have to say that it was not so easy to find fish in restaurants.

I am not good at distinguishing the different fishes, so I cannot tell what I saw. Certainly, they did not look like freshwater fishes. Some of them had rather frightening appearances, some looked almost funny in their posing appearances, and others were quite colorful.

Shrimps were one thing I expected to see, and they were there in noticeable quantities. Other shellfish were not to be seen, such as lobsters or similar types. I saw fish eggs at more than one stall, but I never noticed that they are used in Moroccan cuisine. I have to dig deeper into this.

What else?

As it was a rather short visit to the market hall, I do not remember everything else sold at the Marché Central de Poissons. But the olives looked really nice! The spices were presented beautifully, as I remembered from my visit to Marrakesh some years ago.

All in all

The Marché Central de Poissons in Tanger is a great way to discover fish and meat as part of Moroccan cuisine. Vendors are gentle; no one refused a picture of the produce to be taken. It is worth a visit while in Tanger.

A little link list

• The Marché de Poissons on Facebook
• The post on the market hall in Athens which has something in common with this market hall
• My other posts on Moroccan markets

The post Fish & meat – Marché Central de Poissons, Tanger / Morocco appeared first on Food & Farmers' Markets.

Hipster next to Bratwurst, sophisticated spice stall next to filtered coffee, an award winning butcher – all this in a small place – leaves me surprised. A pleasant one, despite the rain.

The setting

The suspension railway, the zoo and internationally known, now closed, dance theatre Pina Bausch. Those are the highlights of the city of Wuppertal.

The market is framed by the old town hall and some other less interesting architecture. The market has maybe 20 stalls – count them on the picture in the gallery. The walking distance from the suspension railway is about 5 minutes.

When approaching the market it appears like a classic, standard one. Looking a bit closer there a few unusual stalls worth discovering.

The classic stuff

What do you want to buy? Fresh fruits & vegetables? Bread, Australian style banana bread (?!), cheese, fish, flowers? No problem!

Some street food? You like, Bratwurst, Currywurst, grilled chicken, Asian fast food, German style donuts, filtered coffee, fish rolls? You will not leave the place hungry!

So lets check the gems.

Gem I

The award winning butcher Sonnenschein (sunshine) seemed to be very popular as there were three sales ladies behind the counter. The Feinschmecker, a food & travel magazine considered him to be amongst the best ones in Germany. The fridge at home was full, I did not want to buy anything, but the sales ladies allowed me to take some pictures. The offering was not spectacular, so I expect that the basic product quality itself must be good. Next time a purchase is a must.

Gem II

The spice stall is owned by a Iranian who lives in the city for decades and runs the stall since 28 years! He gave me a brief tour of the history of Iranians in Germany during the time when the Shah was replaced by Khomeini. Politics plays an important role in his life. It was the first time at a market that I had such a political conversation.

The offering is quite sophisticated and huge. Good olive oil next to all kinds of spices, soap, rice, caviar – all very nicely displayed. Hard not to buy something. And so I did: a Wuppertal fruit bread with spelt based dough.

Gem III

A new kid on the block. Workeat – the name of the stall which adds to the market a hipster flair. Established since a few weeks by 4 sports guys who came up with the idea of creating some healthy food out of pure self interest: they always had hard times to find decent food after all their work-outs. So they decided to create something new and healthy with other sport guys in mind – always with a touch of protein on top. And what happened: the majority of the customers are women. Probably not a big surprise when the vegetarian or vegan items like currys, wraps, salads and chocolate bars are part of the offering. Still the curry is available with meat and the smoothies are protein rich as well.

I had the chance to eat a curry with mango and snow pea based on whole-grain rice. Helped me to get over the cold in style and joy. The unsweetened apple muffin was great, worth the money. The guys worked for very long on the recipe and now a friendly baker is preparing them.

Besides the food, the drinks had hipster quality as well, be it fruit juices or unsweetened ice tea (not common in Germany), etc. all with fancy labels.

I wish those guys good luck, as they take their experience on the market as a test field for a possible further expansion.

All in all: when you are in Wuppertal and have some spare time go for the market gems.

A little link list:

• The official website of the market
• The award winning butcher Sonnenschein
• The hipsters with their stall Workeat
• More pictures on my photo site

The post Small & eclectic – Wuppertal outdoor market / Germany appeared first on Food & Farmers' Markets.

Some time ago I blogged on Soulard Market in St. Louis, Missouri and I knew it would not be the last time. And so I re-visited it after a few years.

Soulard Market is still impressive to me. It has a very nice, quite original choice of products, catering for needs of all types of communities. The meat comes from all kinds of animals, incl. frogs, the vegetables appear in all their shapes and colours, there is nuts I have not seen elsewhere like whole black walnuts, which are really hard to crack, there is a great spice shop, of course there are also cheeses, even raw milk ones, and seafood is available (sea is quite far). But there is also funny popcorn, donuts etc. Not everything is regional, but everything is interesting and mostly of good quality.

And the crowd visiting the market seems to be as the market itself: rather unpretentious, not flashy, and with very diverse backgrounds, kind of little melting pot. Often people are coming with trolleys to carry their purchases, as it seems to be affordable for everyone unlike on some farmers markets.

Apparently a lot of vendors remain the same as the market has not changed much over the years. It has resisted any potential gentrification as described e.g. for Boston. Yes I missed the vendor of the hot sauces. The Goose Poop (a relish) stand was new to me and showed clearly attempts to create an own brand, rather unusual for this market. There was a new food stand as well, probably the one & only which might be close to be called hipster. They sold nice spring rolls, wraps and alike, ginger salad and more (how does that fit with Dr. Pepper, guys?). But otherwise? …

There seemed to be no substantial change. Is this good? Well, people seem to like it, the flow of visitors never stopped despite the hot humid summer. It is also nice to see some things become a tradition, having own roots and may be called something like home. Despite the lack of change, I have not observed complacency.

I am really curious about the times to come and how new generations of visitors and vendors will shape the market or how the master plan of the city of St. Louis will be put into action (or has it already been put into action?).

All in all: Soulard Market remains one of my favorite ones for its wide diversity in products and visitors, for its down to earth approach, and maybe for the stubbornness to remain as it is.

A little link list

• The official website – kind of …
• The one of the Historic Soulard Market Merchants Association Official Website soulardmarketstl.com
• On facebook
• On Twitter
• Soulard market on the St. Louis city site
• Master plan of the city of St. Louis concerning the market
• An interesting perspective on the development of the Boston Public Market and its impact on gentrification – from untappedcities.com
• A nice video presenting the market from Phil Stephenson

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