Now *this* was a real year-round farmers market, not a touristy food market pretending to be one. I…read morewas extremely jealous of people living in Porto, having access to such great fresh food of absolutely every sort, from dozens of different vendors. There's a large section for produce, which all looked fantastic, and I would absolutely be shopping from frequently if I didn't live thousands of miles away (though one vendor in that section also sold a bunch of different fresh-squeezed juice mixes by the glass as well as selling the fruit itself, for *way* cheaper than you'd find in the US, which went wonderfully with our food), then a separate large section for the more touristy packaged foods such as chocolates/candies, olive oils, hot sauces, tinned fish, etc. Those were definitely more tourist-priced, some of them felt quite overpriced, but some were also more reasonable. I did buy packaged food items from several vendors while I was there. (Honestly, I wish I'd brought back more different Portuguese tinned fish than I did. I did also love the hot sauce made with local aguardiente, that turned out to be just 100% high-proof aguardiente, infused with extra-spicy local peppers. Absolutely not complaining! Just funny, since US liquor laws would absolutely had something to say about them selling that product at a market like this.)
Then, around the edges of the inside of the building, where they have full access to utilities and water and such, are quite a number of vendors for food for immediate consumption, as well as a number of fresh seafood/butcher shops. Obviously they varied wildly in both price and quality (one packaged sushi spot looked delicious, but was *quite* expensive, so we didn't try any; one of the two sandwich shops we got little sandwiches from, was *much* better than the other one), and mostly slightly more tourist-priced than the produce, but overall, pretty reasonable. I don't know how frequently vendors rotate in and out, but we had, possibly non-exhaustively (I didn't write everything down), a couple little sandwiches with great locally cured/smoked sandwich meat from one of the butcher shops, some great fancy grilled cheese (not the sandwich - cheese that had been grilled), obviously some tinned fish (samples, not purchased), and some truly wonderful empanadas (most notably, one made with wild boar!) We also took home some of the pre-packaged cured/smoked sandwich meat from one of the butchers, which I wish I had left with more of, as well (though we basically used up all our weight limit for the flight home, mostly on bottles of Port.) Definitely look around before buying anything for immediate consumption, though, as some places were a lot pricier than others, and there is definitely competition in a lot of product categories.
Upstairs, they also have vendors selling non-food products, but we didn't shop there. We were here for the food!
Also notably, unlike some similar markets we visited on our Iberian vacation, it also absolutely has more than *enough space* for the number of vendors and the number of visitors it gets, so it didn't feel cramped at any point, even though it was definitely well attended.
Definitely recommended.
