Where I like to shop in Mexico

In talking about markets, I have been trying to lay out fairly dispassionately the system of provisioning in Mexico.  But how do I like to shop.  Let’s leave aside for now all the specialty shops I go to because my cooking reflects my peripatetic life English, European, American, and Asian cultures.  That’s for another post.

In Mexico City, I find the tianguises (the moving markets) the most fun.  I am particularly addicted to one in an utterly dull upper working class, lower middle class area of south Mexico City.  Perhaps it’s inverted snobbery.  I like the fact that it’s huge, three city blocks long, three aisles wide, under tent, put up and taken down every week.  I like the fact that it’s utterly unpretentious, that the fruits and vegetables are terrific, that there are always surprises to be found, that I can get glimpses of what ordinary people eat unlike the denizens of upmarket areas such as Polanco, La Condesa, Coyoacán and San Angel, that I can buy shelled fresh peas, the best chicharron ever with lots of crispy meat attached, heavenly nata (clotted cream), whatever bit of the animal takes my fancy, as well as everything I don’t know where to find anywhere else from stoppers to prevent smelly drains to hand knitted children’s clothes to a great stall for cool reading glasses to nifty glassware (pirated?).

After that, it would probably be one of the flourishing markets, Coyoacán, or the upmarket San Juan, though that’s too far except for special occasions.  I go to these for specialty meats, specialty fruits, and to get my pressure cooker seals. I’m not much of a fan of their so-called hand-made tortillas.

When I was in Guanajuato, I preferred to leave the slightly depressing city mercado and head off to nearby small towns such as Silao.  The markets there were livelier, the produce fresher, the surrounding shops (seed shops, for example for beans and animal feed etc) more bustling.  And as Steve Sando of Rancho Gordo bean fame says, this is where you find super interesting plant foods and prepared dishes sold by people sitting in nearby doorways and sidewalks.  Sometimes these are farmers, sometimes not.  It often pays to pay a widow with few resources to sit there all day.  This is where you find exotic kinds of tamales, the delicious pinole, local honey, small caches of fruit, local yocoque in pottery cups.  I didn’t find the tianguises big improvements on these markets (except that perhaps if you wanted really nice imported fabric, for example, it might improbably be in the tianguis).

And, like all the working middle class Mexican women I know, I am truly grateful that there are supermarkets where I can get detergent, dog food, meat, aspirin, and toothpaste all in one trip.

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