We found out about The Nelson Market through chatting with one of the winery hosts. Lucky because this one was great! It's only on Saturday's from 8:00am to 1:00pm (or more likely to about 1:30pm).
We dropped in right around Saturday during lunchtime. There's an excellent variety of vendors; a mix of food, arts and crafts. This is definitely the best market we've been to in New Zealand!
We checked out a couple places:
1) Banjo Brews Kombucha
We always love trying new kombucha places. This one you can sample all their flavours (around half a dozen). We ended up getting one bottle, the Himalayan ($4.00 NZD).
2) Dutch apple donut ($4.50 NZD). I never caught the name of this vendor but they were making fresh apple donuts. We got one fresh out of the fryer! Tasty and filled with a bunch of goodies.
3) Little Shaggery Farm
We spotted some dried fruit (apple crisps and dried plums). We tasted both and really liked the apple crisps ($7.00 NZD for 150g bag). They were just the right sweetness. Perfect for snacking. We also tried two varieties of their pears ($4.00 NZD/kg); chojuro nashi and shinseiki nashi.
4) Windsong Orchard
We spotted this place selling organic plums. They had two types: elephant heart and omega plums ($6.00 NZD/kg). We sampled the elephant ears, which were super sweet, so we ended up buying a few for the road.
5) Bratwurst Grill
They specialize in traditional Bavarian sausages. This spot was non-stop busy and ended up selling out! Crazy. We tried a bratwurst ($5.00 NZD); great bread, tasty sausage and the mustard was fantastic. The lady ran out of bread and was selling just the sausage ($4.00 NZD). People were still buying them. They have a counter selling sausages to take home. The dried/fermented salami looked really, really good. Authentic and great prices.
6) The Wrapshack
We shared a falafel ($12.00 NZD). Homemade chickpea patties with fresh herbs & spices, garlic hummus and mint yoghurt. This is one hefty wrap. Flavours were decent but nothing overly memorable.
We sampled a couple other vendors and browsed the wares. If you're in Nelson on the weekend, it's a must! read more