All over the internet, you’ll find “tips” written by travel bloggers that tell you to shop at local markets when you travel. For a very long time, I thought that was an utterly ridiculous piece of advice. It was right up there with, “buy flowers from a local artisan for your hotel room.” Sure — waste upwards of twenty bucks so that I can toss them at the end of the week. Why would I visit a ‘local market’ to collect meat, vegetables, and fruit? So that I can cook it MYSELF?! On VACATION!? These people had to have been nuts. This of course all changed the moment that I visited the Jean Talon Market in Montreal.

Why did we?

On one particular afternoon, the forecast called for a thunderstorm the entire evening in Montreal. My husband and I were visiting the city with our three month old. The last thing we wanted to do in a chilly thunderstorm was drag him through the streets looking for a restaurant that was cool enough to not be a chain, but welcoming enough to accept babies and all of their unpredictable-ness.

I combed through my guide book and stopped at the “starred” entry for Marche Jean-Talon. “Let’s just do this,” I said in a fairly impatient voice. And so we hopped in our truck expecting to see rows and rows of the same rotting shit, just at different stalls. But we were wrong…dead wrong!

All the things!

The first thing that I immediately noticed was that Jean Talon had many items that were available for immediate consumption. I wasn’t just looking at a bunch of raw produce that I had to figure out how to cook. In many stands I found tapenades, dips, and pre-packaged produce that was of a manageable size. This was useful because honestly, there’s something about being forced to buy a soccer ball bag of tomatoes at a market when I know I have one day left in my AirBnB.

Variety is the spice of market.

A few years ago I was excited to visit the infamous Boqueria Market in Barcelona. However, after walking around for a while…I was pretty underwhelmed. It seemed like just about every kiosk was selling fruit smoothies and watermelon in a cup.

All the tastes!

Whereas, at the Jean Talon Market, it was particularly exciting to find items that I’d never had the opportunity to see let alone taste. I found that when I lingered around a particular stall, genuinely interested in something I’d never seen (like purple garlic), it wasn’t long before the vendor shuffled over and chatted me up. Each time this happened I was given information about where the produce was grown and what made it “a must buy” according to the seller.

I have to say that the vendors who gave me samples of their produce always won me over almost instantly. Especially when it came to ‘ground cherries.’ I’m still not sure if that’s the exact name, but they’re kind of as much fun to eat as they are delicious. Each one has a crepe paper like skin around it, and you push the skin off in one motion before popping the small fruit into your mouth. They’re sweet like most fruits, but also really earthy. In any case, they made their way into my basket.

All the French things!

Of course Montreal is its own city with its own culture, but come on — the French influence lingers heavily especially in the culinary traditions. You’d have to never have interacted with humanity to miss that! Therefore, you’ll find some really remarkable French favorites here by way of bread, cured meat, and cheese. Something I really enjoyed doing was grabbing a familiar favorite (a wheel of Brie) but also, taking a recommendation from the cheese monger behind the counter who recommended another creamy type of fromage.

Speaking of French traditions, if you’ve ever been to Paris or any city in France, and if you DO visit a market, you’ll be told (with soaring pride) from a local that France has some of the strictest rules regarding the quality of produce that vendors are allowed to sell. I was really glad to see that the Jean Talon Market seemed to have the same ethos toward its fruits and vegetables. We bought a bundle of strawberries. While they may have been small (not pumped full of water) but WOW did they pack a punch of flavor! I can still feel the juicy sweetness on my tongue as I write this.

It gets better!

At the end of our shopping journey, we raced home. We walked through the door mere minutes before the loud, heavy, cold rain began. After putting our son to sleep for the night, we excitedly pulled our picnic dinner from our shopping bags. Then. we settled in for one of the MOST enjoyable meals I’ve had with my husband. High above the city we sat on the couch in our ‘apartment’ drinking wine and savoring the crunchiness of bread, smooth texture of the cheese, the tanginess of organic fruits, and saltiness of cured meat. I suppose this was something of a ‘local experience’ — a buzz phrase that penetrates every conversation relating to travel.

Well, if this was any measure of how locals in Montreal get to enjoy a quiet night in, they’re DAMN lucky!