Santiago Mercado Central

This market is something like an old fashioned grocery store set up inside a train station permeated with a pungent, lingering scent of exotic fish. The outer ring of stores sell the raw foods and restaurants – many of a wonderful Creole style - and cooked foods are part of the central market. No longer really the city’s principal wholesaler, the market hasn’t lost its life and ambience – or its reputation for fresh local produce, again, especially fish…and it also hasn’t kicked the smell. Every prize from the Chilean coast can be found here and enthusiastic fishmongers will decapitate and gut your choice with a few flicks of the wrist before your eyes.

Arrive on foot or on the subway and take a moment to admire the ceiling, an art nouveau wonder originally destined to be a train station and built in the UK, a wonder in steel and glass. Now well and truly on the tourist trail, expect to get harangued by locals to come to their restaurant or buy their octopus, crab or shellfish.

Written by  World Reviewer Staff.

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