Markets in Mexico have a huge impact on the Mexican food culture. That’s the place where local farmers sell their products and earn their income. For Mexicans, a popular thing to do on Sundays is to go to a market. Sunday is a family day for most families. They go to a market, buy fresh veggies, fruits and meat from the local farmers for the whole week. Depending on the time of the day the families go to the market, they’ll often have either breakfast or lunch there after buying the food. This is a way for them to enjoy some family time together.

Usually, the food markets have two different areas; outside area and inside area. The inside area is like a big hall full of little stands where they sell veggies, fruits and meat. Also often in the indoor halls, piñatas are hanging from the roof. So while walking inside the market hall and looking up, you will see many different colorful creatures hanging down on the roof. In the Mexican culture, piñatas are a tradition for kids’ birthday parties. During a birthday party, piñata full of candies will be hung on a tree outside in the garden, or inside the house on the roof and the birthday boy/girl will be smashing the piñata blindfolded. After the piñata breaks, all the candies will fall on the ground and the kids will race each other to get the most candies to themselves.

In the outside area, there are many food stands. For example, you can buy gorditas at the market. Gorditas are small thick tortillas, which are cut and filled inside. They are delicious, so be sure to try them out when visiting a food market in Mexico.

One thing that really jumped into my mind about the markets, is hygiene. Being used to the hygienic standards in my home country, Finland, Mexico is not even close to them. All the food are prepared openly. The market I visited in Guanajuato, was in two floors; the main floor downstairs with all the food stands and a second floor with souvenir stands “around the food stands”. But as the second floor was around the food stands, and the food stands were without any roof on top of them, anyone could throw or drop something from upstairs to the food. Even though people are probably not doing so (at least I hope), it still made me feel a bit uncomfortable eating there. I felt like I wanted to eat something “safe” and I found a food stand that had some cover on top of the food, so I ended up eating there and having a torta. I’m also not sure how they take care of their hand hygiene, as the stands don’t seem to have water taps where they could wash their hands. If there are any Mexican readers, lighten me up in the comment box, please.

I’ve only visited few food markets in Querétaro and Guanajuato which are probably nothing compared to the ones in e.g. Mexico City. But the ones I visited were all a bit different from each other. And by that I mean, the one in Querétaro had the piñatas hanging on the top and the other one in Querétaro didn’t and was more of a “Sunday market” type. The streets close to the main market hall were also full of people selling fruits and veggies but also other things, like dishes, plants and street food. The market in Guanajuato (the big, open hall in the photos) was more full of street food stands than fruit and veggies, but also had a few stands of selling those.

In my opinion, it’s very interesting to see food markets in different cities or areas. Markets in different parts of the country have different food specialties. Gorditas are the speciality in Querétaro region. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to explore more this time, because of the whole situation in the world. But I hope to visit many more food markets in Mexico soon. I’m eager to learn more about the culture around it and taste the different specialties.

Let me know in the comments what are your thought about Mexican food markets, and what you found interesting in this article.

Love, Emilia