Food is not rational. Food is culture, habit, craving, and identity.
– Jonathan Safan Foer
Wiser words were never spoken, at least when it comes to food. And nowhere is the junction between food and culture more tangible than in the food markets of Southeast Asia. From the maze of wooden stalls sagging under the weight of a staggering array of culinary possibilities to entire families crushed together around low plastic tables, eating boisterously, food markets embody the spirit of a place.
The possibilities of a food market, its hustle and bustle, its very foreigness, lend itself to a kind of frenetic energy. It’s exhilarating to take part in the traditions, engaging in a truly authentic experience, by taking a few simple steps.
Try everything. One of the greatest perks of eating at food markets is that it’s possible, if not encouraged, to purchase an astonishing variety of food in tiny quantities. You aren’t sitting down to a meal. The key is to saunter casually through the winding alleys crowded with wooden stalls and low tables, pausing to snack as you go. This guarantees that you sample the widest variety of foods. A few years ago during a trip to Bangkok, for example, I explored its Chinatown district. That food market is famous for, among other things, the freshness of its seafood. As I ambled the narrow streets, it was easy to see why – every available surface not used for cooking was teeming with fish and shellfish, often still alive. I wandered from stall to stall, buying two prawns here, a few squid tentacles there, and watching them grilled or fried in front of me, accompanied by a variety of sauces and spices.
But start with something you know. Let’s be honest – eating standing up outside in a crowded market place in a foreign country is a challenge in itself. There are throngs of people, especially at meal times, shouting in a strange language and making unrecognizable purchases. Lost in the sights, sounds, and smells of a vibrant, bubbling marketplace, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed or, in a fit of panic and indecision, buy a pound of beetles or a bag of chicken feet accidentally. My recommendation? Proceed calmly to a food stand selling something familiar, like a chicken skewer or a spring roll. Buy one (we’re not trying to fill up here) and eat it while strolling around the rest of the market. This has the benefit of taking the edge off of what is almost certainly a gnawing hunger, as well as allowing you to survey your options and take stock of any local eating traditions or delicacies. Buoyed by this small success, the market and its wares will seem much less intimidating.
Take one big risk. Next time you visit an open air food market in an exotic location, try and sample at least one thing you could never imagine eating. That new experience – good or bad – will be one of your best travel stories. No one wants to hear that you backpacked around Cambodia eating rice. You can eat rice anywhere. Most of us don’t plan on returning to the same vacation destinations more than once, especially when traveling in more remote areas. Your stroll through the food markets may be your only opportunity to sample the local delicacy – whatever it is. It’s not always easy to make yourself try something new. I’ll eat a trough of gellato in Italy, for example, much more happily than my efforts to sample boiled snails in Laos. Just remember, food doesn’t become popular or profitable without at least a few redeeming qualities. Insects, for example, taste either like what they’ve eaten, or in an ideal world, what they’ve been cooked in. The sauteed crickets I ate in Vietnam tasted like butter and garlic. It was the texture and the crunching sounds I couldn’t get past.
Follow the crowds. One of the most common concerns when it comes to outdoor eating at food stalls is health and sanitation. No one wants to spend several days of their vacation recovering from a food-born illness. The key to safe eating is to focus on the food stalls also patronized by the locals; they’ll be your best indicator of what is safe and delicious, and what is a little too risky.
Listen to the experts. Your fellow eaters, the market regulars, and the food stall proprietors themselves are your best guides to the particulars of any foreign food market. They’ll show you not just what to eat, but how to eat it, sometimes whether you want them to or not. I’ve been instructed on all kinds of culinary nuances, from how to suck the head out of the shrimp skeleton to how to thoroughly enjoy all the parts of a crab, including its lungs. Unfortunately for the crab, the prospect of defying the tiny Vietnamese woman delivering the lecture was far more terrifying than eating the lungs themselves.
It’s about more than just food. Food markets, especially outside the major cities, have long been traditional meeting places for travelers and residents alike. In some places, little has changed. Embrace the new-ness of the culture by doing something completely foreign, trying something you thought you’d never try, and losing yourself in the experience.
Let’s be fearless,
Jen