This Smithsonian story on the Athens Central Market got me thinking about food (again), but not for the usual escapist reasons. For one thing, Athens Central isn’t a food porn kind of place, since it has all those bloody carcasses, intestines and glassy-eyed fish that inevitably come with creepy sales pitches (i.e. “baby lambs fed only on mother’s milk!"). When I first visited the market in 2004, the full-on raucousness of the place unnerved me. But it also awoke something primal in my palate—something these old but enduring agoras usually do to the sheltered supermarket set.

I’d never made the Greek fisherman’s soup known as kakavia with anything but packaged slices of perch and snapper, but the contents of the country’s hoariest soup are better found in the giant iced spreads of fresh scorpionfish, bream, grouper, shrimp, crab and mussels. Mix with the basics—bay leaf, lemon juice, onions, tomatoes, celery and carrots—and a dash of seawater (not advised these days because of pollution) and it is far more authentically Greek than souvlaki.

Markets like the Athens Dimotiki Agora (as it’s known locally) carry layers of history, especially in oft-conquered lands like Greece. In Thessaloniki’s Modiano Market, constructed by a Greek Jewish architect before anti-Semitism and World War II practically destroyed the city’s vibrant Jewish population, there are Turkish spices, Pontic cheeses, old village potions curing everything from menstrual cramps to a low libido, and rows and rows of the usual fresh meats, fish, vegetables and fruit. When I visited in early 2007, one spice vendor regaled me with stories of the Constantinople Greeks, who came to Thessaloniki as refugees and bestowed an outstanding cuisine on the land.

I bought little baggies of clove and cinnamon. When I got back to Athens I made a favorite dish from that cuisine: quinces stuffed with spiced ground lamb. The market felt like time travel, and its fresh-ground bounties suffused my home with the scents of East meets West.

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* Inside Great Sushi and the World’s Biggest Fish Market

Photo by Daquella Manera via Flickr (Creative Commons).