TIM MAGEE is just HOME from a trip around EUROPE and he’s in the market for good FOOD
I’m in Batty Langley’s on the edge of the City in London, speculating on the markets, and a doughnut. The brilliantly named hotel is a labour of love and the bonkers crown jewel from the quirky clever clogs that created Hazlitt’s and The Rookery. It’s like the Mad Hatter and Jacques Garcia got married and set up house. Unlike most restoration jobs though, this isn’t a museum, nor a creaky style-over-substance stiff, as the stuff behind the walls is as considered as what’s on them. Everything works beautifully and has the level of polish that is only possible when people really care.
I’ve just come from Madrid but the markets I’ve been studying there and here in London aren’t the financial kind, they’re the edible kind. The doughnut is from Crosstown Doughnuts in nearby Spitalfields. It’s a concoction of sourdough, sea salt caramel and banana cream, and sounds like something dreamt up by a couple of drunken pastry chefs figuring out their death row dessert. The Old Spitalfields Market where I found it has been around forever but is now a polished and pasteurised gem, the kind that should be coming to a capital near you soon. Indoor food markets are instant tourist magnets and native treasures like the magnificent Mathallen in Oslo, the Time Out market in Lisbon, and the upcoming Bourdain Market in New York: 150,000 square feet of Pier 57 will attract visitors in their droves.
Indoor food markets are instant tourist magnets and native treasures that attract visitors in their droves
A market like any of these should be coming to our own capital but it’s not here yet. Although it could do with some more on-the-spot dining, Cork is blessed with the English Market and the Farmgate Café but that is our only full-time indoor market. There are cracking part-timers like the Milk Market in Limerick and St George’s in Belfast, and the various farmers’ markets sprinkled through the country on any given Saturday or Sunday, but what about Dublin? If the country’s biggest tourist draw is a slightly out of the way beer storehouse what could we do with a sparkling home for our best food and drink, say somewhere like one of the left-behind beauties on O’Connell Street?
My imaginary market will be controlled in the same way as a national theatre, with the equivalent of a commercial director and a programming director. Artisan is indefinable, so we would need someone who knew what best presented our authenticity and, in this case, someone who would programme what says the most about us, including having chefs from restaurants from around the island coming to Dublin for a few months at a time in the off-season. How nice it would be to have the lovely people and food from Inis Meáin Suites, The Idle Wall in Westport or Mews in Baltimore set up shop and prosper while promoting their food.
The market in my head is a national meeting place to replace Clerys Clock. Alongside the stalls selling produce could be locals and tourists milling around with Craigie’s Dalliance cider in champagne flutes, with oysters, cheese and some lamb croquettes
The market in my head is a national meeting place to replace Clerys Clock. An Irish Eataly. Alongside the stalls selling produce could be locals and tourists milling around with Craigie’s Dalliance cider in champagne flutes, with oysters, cheese and some lamb croquettes, listening to experts talk about the things they love, have grown or made. What would separate it from other markets would be pop-up spaces for the regional residencies and on the top floor, a year-round R&D test kitchen-cum-restaurant that would categorise our food and develop the food-think we don’t have – a consistent edible national identity, a national cuisine. It was nearly home and dry at one stage but it became cheaper for investors to buy and flip apartments. Anyway, whoever does pick it up should spend some time in the Spanish capital, Europe’s food market capital before setting up at home.
In Madrid my market watch base was the Hotel Urso. The complete opposite of Batty’s but equally lovely, perfectly polished and thought through. Where Old Spitalfields Market was a short backstreet amble from Batty Langley’s, the market by the Urso in Madrid was a doughnut’s throw across the road.
A stage set, as such, for storeys and stories of dreamy ham, winking fish and decorative vegetables, its four pristine floors of impeccable displays are not for show though – this is a real, working market where the aisles are full of Madrileños with baskets and a purpose: to scour and score the best deals of the day of the freshest fish, fowl, fruit and more.
It would be good enough to be the main market for any capital in the world. But the Mercado Municipal de Barceló is just another in a long list of remarkable markets dotted through the green spaces, back streets and the grandest of buildings in Spain’s classy but gutsy capital. The queen of these is the magesterial Mercado de San Miguel, a stunning cast-iron vaulted, glass-ceilinged cathedral to ingredients.
I ate my way around the best parts of the Spanish coastline and interior – sea urchins, clams, jamón, cheeses, cava, croquettes – a grown up’s pick’n’mix. Along with the Mercado de San Miguel, Mercado de Antón Martín, Mercado San Antón, Mercado de la Paz and all the others, every part of Madrid is animated by one of these little temples of produce and the tributaries of streets and businesses that feed them in a way that our own capital can only dream of. Hopefully soon we will set out our own permanent stall for the world to see and taste.
Tim Magee @manandasuitcase
This article appeared in a previous issue, for more features like this, don’t miss our May issue, out Thursday May 5.
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