July 26, 2009

Heads Up
Madrid Market Bustles Again
By SARAH WILDMAN
 

ON a recent morning, before the midday sweltering heat had settled on Madrid, a statuesque fashion model clad entirely in white, her hair pulled tight and high into an elaborately wrought bun, posed with a bountiful head of lettuce in front of a fruit stand so beautiful it looked to be a still life. An elderly woman pushed forward past her, eager to get some tomatoes and move on to the next stall, photographer be damned.
 
In Madrid even those paths most heavily trod by guidebook-toting package tour groups are also home to living and breathing city dwellers, fashionable and otherwise. That delicate balance of commerce and fashion, tourism and daily life, meets just outside the walls of Plaza Mayor where the long-dormant Beaux-Arts Mercado San Miguel (34-91-542-4939; www.mercadodesanmiguel.es) has reawakened, like a city-market phoenix, after a multi-year restoration.
 
“It’s a traditional market for the 21st century,” said Ana Martín, a publicist for the 33 vendors loosely linked side-by-side under a soaring wood-and-iron roof. By day the Mercado woos residents and visitors alike, with purveyors hawking everything from produce to fish, fresh pastas to pastries, cookbooks to cooking utensils. After hours, the crowd shifts focus to beers and tapas; the frutería closes; a wine bar draws a genial mob.
The Plaza San Miguel has been a haggling haven for Madrid’s homemakers and servants since the early 19th century. The iron-and-glass Mercado opened in May 1916, a monument to modernism and new ideas on hygiene, reminiscent of Les Halles in Paris. Eventually all but abandoned, the building fell into disrepair. Restoration began after private investors bought the building in 2003. In a nod to living green, instead of air-conditioning, the air is infused with water droplets; every few minutes shoppers are bathed in a blast of micro-rain.
 
Midday the market is filled with locals waiting as their ham or hake is sliced and wrapped in white paper; baguettes jut out from so many wheeled carts. But there are also businessmen and -women, standing at one of the three mini-restaurants of the market — some at the cafetería, drinking café con leche and eating croissants or tiny bocadillos of roast beef, salmon or pork (2.50 euros, or $3.55 at $1.42 to the euro), others at the cervecería, drinking an early beer. Plates are piled high with tapas of salmon, cod or tuna, picked up at La Casa del Bacalao for 1 euro apiece. An apple strudel from the Pastelería Austriaca, 2.90 euros, is just as tempting. The hall is filled with picnic-ready steel tables and stools.
 
Marketgoers vary between those shopping to cook at home — whole chickens, tubs of freshly pickled olives — and those who have come to gawk at the market itself. Vinçon, the Barcelona high-end tabletop shop, has a stall. So does Laie, the Catalan bookseller, in a food-focused bookshop well stocked with both kitsch (Spanish cooking advertisements cast as magnets for 3.50 euros) and gorgeous coffee-table books.
 
Open until 10 p.m. Monday to Wednesday, and 2 a.m. Thursday through Saturday, the market’s night brings long lines at Daniel Sorlut, an oyster and Champagne bar, and La Fromagerie, where tapas of nutty goat cheese are 1 euro. At Pinkleton & Wine, the bartender suggests trying a Zaragozan garnacha for 10 euros, or the house Rioja for 3 euros.
 
Despite beautiful new granite floors and a design-y feel, “our prices are better than the supermarket,” said Ms. Martín, the market’s publicist, “and our lettuce is much more beautiful.”