There are many things I miss about Italy, but one of them, senza dubbio, is the tradition of going to the mercato.
And when I say mercato, I don’t simply mean grocery shopping. It’s really not the same thing.
Almost every little town in Italy has its own weekly market. There is a specific day, everybody knows it, and that morning the usual streets and piazzas suddenly change. Stalls everywhere, people walking around with their bags, vendors calling you from behind the counter, qualcuno che chiacchiera, qualcuno che contratta sul prezzo… and you can find pretty much anything. Fish, meat, fruit and vegetables, cheese, flowers, clothes, shoes, things for the house and, obviously, at least three things you had absolutely no intention of buying when you left home.
Insomma… un grande bazaar pieno di cose belle e buone.
The food, though, is always my favorite part.
There is something completely different about buying fruit and vegetables at a market. First of all, la qualità. You find beautiful seasonal produce, but more importantly, you can actually talk to the people behind it. Very often you’re buying directly from farmers, or from people who have been doing this job for decades and know exactly what is good that week.
You don’t just grab a peach and leave. You ask.
“Quali sono più buone?”
“Questi pomodori come sono?”
“Il melone lo mangio oggi o aspetto?”
And they know. They touch it, smell it, look at it for approximately half a second and somehow know everything there is to know about that particular product.
“Questo mangialo oggi.”
“Quello lascialo fuori fino a domani.”
“Prendi questi, sono più dolci.”
And you listen. Because when someone who has been selling tomatoes for thirty years tells you quali pomodori comprare… you don’t argue.
Ti fidi.
Now.
Possiamo parlare del formaggio? Please let’s do it. Because this is where I usually lose all self-control.
When I go back to visit my family in Brescia, Friday morning means one thing: mercato del Villaggio Prealpino with my mom. It’s basically a fixed appointment, and there is one stop that I absolutely cannot skip: il banco delle signore dei formaggi.
I don’t even know what their stand is actually called. I have no idea.
For me, they are simply le mie signore. And le mie signore welcome you with what I can only describe as an indecent amount of cheese.
Formaggi everywhere. Stagionati, pasta molle, delicati, cremosi, erborinati… and then those beautiful, super strong, incredibly smelly ones that make you take one step back when you first smell them and then immediately think, “Questo deve essere buonissimo.”
Una goduria per i veri foodies.
I stand there looking at everything like a child in a candy store, asking questions, tasting little pieces and obviously buying much more than originally planned. Then I have everything vacuum-packed so I can bring it back home with me and, once I’m here, make beautiful taglieri and aperitivi.
Every time I open one of those packages, it’s like bringing home a tiny piece of that Friday morning.
Okay… basta. Non tergiversiamo.
I know I get a little emotional when I talk about cheese. The formaggi deserve their own story and, trust me, prima o poi arriverà.
We were talking about the mercato.
For me, markets have always been about much more than food anyway. They have always represented a moment of condivisione. A morning spent together. A little ritual.
When we’re in Gallipoli, for example, one of my favorite things is going to the fish market with Papà. But attenzione: only early in the morning.
According to my dad, if you want the real good stuff and the real deals, bisogna andare presto. No discussion.
So you go when the morning still feels like morning, and the market is already completely alive. Fish on the counters, ice everywhere, voices coming from every direction, people asking prices, fishermen talking, that unmistakable smell of the sea. “Signore! Polipo freschissimo!” “Venga venga, abbiamo i ricci!”
And then you see them.
Gamberi rossi. Beautiful, shiny, fresh gamberi rossi.
And obviously… si assaggiano crudi.
Or the ricci di mare. Open them right there, eat them fresh, and honestly there are very few things that taste more like the sea than that.
You arrive thinking you’re just going to “fare un giro” and somehow you come home carrying a bottino of wonderful things and enough fish to feed half the neighborhood.
Which is fantastic. Until you remember…qualcuno adesso deve pulire tutto quel pesce. But that’s a problem for later.
Some of the memories I treasure the most, though, are the market days I spent with my Nonna Renata.
When I was a teenager, I used to visit her in Ciriè, just outside Torino. Nonno Germano would drive us into the city center and we would spend hours, and I really mean ore ed ore, walking around the markets.
I can still picture it so clearly. Me and Nonna in front, completely absorbed in whatever we were doing. Looking, trying things on, tasting something, stopping at another stand, chatting with someone, then going back because maybe we had changed our minds about something we’d seen twenty minutes earlier.
And behind us…Nonno.
This poor man. He would follow us around all day like our personal bodyguard. Una pazienza incredibile.
Never rushing us, never really complaining, just quietly following the two of us while we took approximately ten years to make every single decision.
Every now and then I imagine him thinking, “Ma quando torniamo a casa?” But he stayed.
And of course, a proper market day couldn’t simply end with shopping. There had to be a merenda.
So after hours of walking, we would all go to a pasticceria, sit down and have something sweet together.
Then I got older. And, naturally, la merenda became aperitivo. An upgrade, diciamo!
There were also many times when Nonna and I went into Torino just the two of us, taking the bus instead. We would leave together and then come home absolutely loaded with bags, tired from walking all day but incredibly satisfied with ourselves.
We had talked, we had shopped, we had eaten. Una giornata perfetta.
Il portafoglio del Nonno, maybe a little less enthusiastic about the whole experience.
And then… Zia Anna. My fashionista aunt.
Going to the market with Zia Anna was an entirely different sport. She knew the good ones.
And I don’t mean the markets everyone knew. No, no.
She knew exactly where some of Torino’s historic boutiques would take their clothes and sell beautiful pieces at incredible prices. She knew the days, the places, the stands.
Basically, insider information. So when Zia Anna said we were going to a market, you followed.
And off we went on what can only be described as a tour de force. Rack after rack.
“Prova questo.”
“No, questo colore no.”
“Aspetta, guarda questo!”
And obviously, the most important part…contrattare.
“Quanto mi fai?”
I loved watching it.
There’s an entire little performance involved in negotiating at the market. You pretend you’re not completely in love with something. The vendor pretends that’s absolutely the lowest price they could ever possibly offer. You walk away approximately three centimeters.
And somehow…affare fatto.
The funny thing is that after an entire day of searching, trying things on and negotiating like we were buying half of Torino, we’d probably come home with two things…due cose in croce.
But it didn’t matter.
Because when I think about those days now, I barely remember what we bought.
I remember the day.
And I think that’s what I miss most about the Italian mercato.
I miss being able to ask someone which peaches are best that week.
I definitely miss le mie signore dei formaggi.
I miss eating a gambero rosso with Papà at the fish market early in the morning.
But more than anything, I miss everything that happened around the shopping.
Walking through Torino next to Nonna Renata. Nonno quietly following behind us with the patience of a saint.
Coming home together on the bus, cariche di buste but extremely pleased with ourselves.
Running around markets with Zia Anna searching for some impossible bargain.
Friday mornings in Brescia with Mamma.
Those were never commissioni o cose da fare. They were days.
And maybe that’s what is so different about the mercato.
You go because you need tomatoes or fish or cheese.
Or magari non ti serve proprio niente.
And somehow you come home with bags full of things…and years later, you realize you brought home something else too.
Che momenti preziosi.
Ciao,
Laura