To Market, To Market, To Buy Fresh Fish
The New Market of Panjim would put other markets around India to shame, it’s that clean and sensibly laid out and it has the most variety of fish. UPPERCRUST is impressed. It's there bang in the middle of Panjim, just across the road from the Mandovi river, on it's main waterfront. The New Market is neat, clean, not noisy at all and very systematically arranged. There are four lanes as you enter, with rows of vegetable vendors. They are not seated at ground level, with their baskets kept at the feet, and where the dirt and the dust is likely to get into the produce, but they are at least three feet above the ground, seated on concrete slabs. So as the customer winds his way leisurely through the aisles, he very comfortably inspects and selects what he wants to buy.  And there is plenty to buy. The produce looks fresh and enticing even at the end of the day which is when Team UpperCrust made its way there.Apart from vegetables you can also pick all your groceries and bakery stuff too, there are tiny shops which line one side of the market. Since we almost always bring back local ingredients we bought some of those black berries that is added to the Goan fish curry to give it that unique flavour. Beware though for they come with pokey thorns, they do. We also picked up a bottle of local palm vinegar. A good cook never buys the chemical laden variety available at the grocers.  At the end of the vegetable section is the flower market, very attractive and with plenty of customers it did prove that Goans like to buy flowers for their homes. Towards the right is the fish section, with a few shops at the entrance selling mutton and chicken. We have been to fish markets all over India but the variety at The New Market had us stumped. That and the fact that it was so, so, so clean. And the fisher folks so friendly, they were giving fish away to us for free, because we were writing about their beloved Goa. And yes, they were only too happy to pose. |
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