SAO PAULO, BRAZIL
SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA
Mercado Municipal Housed in a 1928 neo-baroque-style building, the hall is noted for its gigantic stained-glass windows, depicting scenes of cattle, market gardening and coffee and banana plantations • Is a quintessential hotspot for gourmets and food lovers • Houses 318 stands that sell just about everything edible and the quality is exceptional • Start with a cafezinho and the delicious cheese buns, pao de quijo • Wander through stalls selling fresh-water fish, herbs, pimentos in olive oil, beans and legumes and salad greens • For lunch, get a salt cod pastel from the famed Hocca Bar. Or the wildly popular mortadella sandwiches, filled with Italian cured sausage • This is the best place to try innumerable exotic fruits that rarely make it to other parts of the world, like acai berries, jabuticaba, bacuri and the local favourite, guanabano.
Noryangjin Fish Market This is one the greatest food spectacles on earth • Houses more than 700 shops selling fresh and dried fish and squid from 15 fishing ports around Korea • This is an authentic market where the floor is concrete, everyone is wearing rubber boots and blinding bulbs dangle over rows and rows of fish and anything else that is edible from the sea • It’s crammed with exotic sea creatures from every conceivable aquatic locale including some the most bizarre aquatic creatures you will ever see • Almost everything is still alive • There are acres of stingrays aligned precisely as roof tiles, gilt lengths of ribbonfish, regiments of pike, oceans of halibut, endless trays of pickled clams, and more kinds of jacks and mackerels and anchovies than is possible to identify • Put your purchases into plastic bags and go upstairs to one of the first-floor gallery’s bringyour-own restaurants, where they will cook your seafood for you. It’s brilliant: no cooking skills are required. You just hand over your bag of shopping to the waitress, pay a small cooking fee and buy the necessary accoutrements (soy sauce, wasabi, lettuce, kimchi) • Try the sannakji, baby octopus. They are often served up raw and still moving; sliced into small pieces that are dipped into red pepper paste and washed down with soju, a popular and inexpensive Korean alcohol • The market remains open 24 hours a day • An entire floor is devoted to auctioning of fish and remains especially crowded in the wee hours of the morning. The auction starts at 1am.
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SEATTLE, UNITED STATES Pike Place Market Is a Seattle institution, and the nation’s oldest continuously operating farmers’ market • Fish, fruit, produce and street food thrive here • Is famous for its fresh-off-the-boat seafood and the personalities of the quirky fishmongers working in the fish stalls • Every time a customer orders a whole fish, the monger du jour hurls someone’s dinner from one end of the floor to the elevated main counter where a second monger consistently and easily catches the fish • Some of Seattle’s best restaurants are tucked away in nooks and crannies on the numerous levels of the market • Don’t miss Daily Dozen Doughnut Company. Their doughnuts are hot and packed into brown paper bags. They come in plain, powdered sugar, cinnamon and sprinkles with chocolate • Uli’s and its Merguez on a baguette with mustard is a must. 106
SINGAPORE Kreta Ayer Wet Market A cacophonous hall is the backdrop for a wide variety of Asian greens, curry blends and pharmaceuticals made from sundry dried animal parts • Fearless local housewives can
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