Mercado de San Juan

The Mercado de San Juan, officially Mercado Ernesto Pugibet, is a city-owned market on Ernesto Pugibet street in the south-west of the Centro Histórico, and the place where Mexico City's chefs, cooking students and serious home cooks shop. The building dates from 1955. It stands on the site of the old warehouses of the El Buen Tono cigarette company and carries the name of Ernesto Pugibet, the industrialist who owned the land and ceded it to the city; its everyday name comes from the neighbouring Plaza de San Juan, where food vendors were already trading in the early 20th century. It began like any other neighbourhood market and turned gourmet from the 1970s on, a shift that free-trade agreements later pushed further.

Today it is known above all for meats you will not find elsewhere in the city. Butchers lay out venison, rabbit, wild boar, goat, duck, quail, pheasant and crocodile, and some stalls sell even rarer cuts such as lion, raised on farms and sold, vendors say, with the paperwork to prove its origin. Fishmongers rival the best in the city, there are cheeses and charcuterie from Europe and South America alongside Mexican ones, imported pasta, oils and vinegars, edible flowers, and seasonal wild mushrooms in the rainy months. Pre-Hispanic delicacies have a following of their own: escamoles, maguey worms, chapulines, chicatana ants and even scorpions.

Many stall-holders are third- or fourth-generation, some descended from European immigrants, and the market has a strong roster of places to eat at the counter. Delis hand out a sliver of aged cheese and a glass of wine with their baguettes, seafood stalls make aguachile and ceviche tostadas, and others grill exotic-meat burgers and tacos. Go hungry and, ideally, with friends so you can share several dishes. Each stall keeps its own hours, and many of the kitchens wind down in the late afternoon.