A Bit of an Ode to Granville Island

I often tell peo­ple that liv­ing near and shop­ping reg­u­larly for food at Granville Island has ‘changed my life’. It’s true, and I thought I’d spend a lit­tle time try­ing to explain how and why.

First of all, it’s changed the food that I buy. I rarely get food that comes in a box or is pre-processed, and get mostly fresh meat and veg­eta­bles. The things I do buy that are cooked or pre­pared include sausages and other meats and paté from Oyama Sausage com­pany, soup from the Stock Mar­ket soup kitchen, the occa­sional pie (dessert or entree) from À la Mode, and bread from any of the 3 bak­eries (French — La Baguette & L’Echalote, Arti­sanal — Terra Breads, or English/North Amer­i­can — Stu­arts). I try to buy what’s in sea­son (although that can be hard in Jan­u­ary or Feb­ru­ary), and look for­ward to cer­tain months when I know some­thing will be appear­ing and grad­u­ally (or swiftly) going down in price. We are about to hit the sum­mer fruit sea­son, and I love see­ing the arrival of peaches, apri­cots, plums and blue­ber­ries. Because of this, I’ve learned which ven­dors have the best of each vari­ety of fruit, veg­etable or meat. While I do get some organic veg­eta­bles (onions and pota­toes), I also try to buy things that are grown locally. Again, this makes the win­ter months a time when I have to com­pro­mise a bit, but most of the year it’s quite possible.

We are very lucky in that we live a short walk from the mar­ket, and I quite frankly can’t imag­ine liv­ing far­ther away from it. The fact that we walk there and carry our gro­ceries back adds just a lit­tle bit of exer­cise (or at least the excuse to go out­side and get some air, even if the weather is rainy or sim­ply dreary.) For the vast major­ity of vis­i­tors to Granville Island, the mar­ket is a curios­ity, a kind of liv­ing museum of the way peo­ple used to shop for food (and still do in many other coun­tries out­side of North Amer­ica). I’m always amused to see some­one tak­ing a pho­to­graph of a stack of cher­ries or straw­ber­ries (although they are pretty); They’re get­ting a snap­shot of my gro­cery store, and in a few cases where they flood the aisle and are obliv­i­ous to the rest of us, I wish they’d just get out of the way and let me get on my shop­ping. That doesn’t hap­pen too often, but some days, when a tourist bus lets off, the mar­ket has to walk the thin line between attrac­tion and gro­cery store.

I shop at the mar­ket often, and nearly always bring a sack. Since I’m there so much, I’m rec­og­nized by nearly all of the mer­chants, and am on a first name basis with sev­eral of them. I’ve also learned about their fam­i­lies, heard some sto­ries, found out their likes and dis­likes, and think of them as peo­ple, not just some­one at a cash reg­is­ter. I’m impressed with the close-knit fam­i­lies who work in the Mar­ket, and am often been cheered up (or calmed down) by sim­ply enter­ing the mar­ket, espe­cially when it’s not crowded with tourists, which unlike a Super­mar­ket, is not lit solely by flu­o­res­cents. (I should add that on Foursquare, the social media ‘game’, I’m the mayor of Granville Island Mar­ket, and have yet to be replaced by some­one who checks-in there more.)

Speak­ing of Super­mar­kets, I do go to Costco about once every 2 months or so for a few items (olive oil, paper goods, maple syrup), and also go to an organic gro­cer on Broad­way (who used to be the Dan-De-Pak home office, or so it seemed) for rice, the odd box of break­fast cereal or crack­ers, etc.) I always feel kind of dis­ap­pointed and maybe even a lit­tle depressed when I walk into a cav­ernous Safe­way, IGA or Save-On Foods, all lit by those flu­o­res­cent lights, and very cold from the frozen aisles.

Back to the Granville Mar­ket: In addi­tion to the peo­ple, the food and the light, there are the smells. I can nearly nav­i­gate the mar­ket by my nose. In the fish mar­ket, I can smell the brine of today’s catch. There’s fre­quently the aroma of freshly baked bread by the bak­eries (and La Baguette has that mar­velous yeasty smell of pain de mie nearly all of the time). The food court (which I must con­fess, I some­times go to first, in order to eat before I shop, which helps stop larger pur­chases made when hun­gry), there are areas where you smell pizza, curry, or falafel. In sev­eral spots in the build­ing, the smell of cof­fee and tea wafts out into the aisle, and you can under­stand why there’s such a line at J J Bean.

In the sum­mer, there is the extra treat of Thurs­days, par­tic­u­larly in the morn­ing, when local farm­ers truck in their pro­duce, and sell some of it out­side, next to the Mar­ket. In recent years, some farm­ers have spe­cial­ized in Heir­loom Toma­toes, and I’ve actu­ally tasted cel­ery (yes, cel­ery!) that is actu­ally mind-blowingly sweet and tasty. Some of the farm­ers stay all day, but most of them are there mainly in the morn­ing, so Thurs­days are par­tic­u­larly good to get early and get the best produce.

I’ve dis­cov­ered new fruits and veg­eta­bles at the mar­ket. We’ve tried Sting­ing Net­tles as a side dish, and boiled down elder­ber­ries into syrup. I’ve cooked sour cherry soup, and after our trip to South­east Asia, have made Ataulfo Man­goes (Manila Honey Man­goes), Drag­on­fruit, Rambu­tans, Lon­gans, Lychees, Pom­leos and Pas­sion­fruits a treat for break­fast or dessert. Nearly all are avail­able (although not cheaply most of the time) at the mar­ket. I’ve fre­quented the Asian Food spe­cialty shop in the mar­ket, The South China Seas Trad­ing Com­pany, where I’ve finally learned to appre­ci­ate the finer points of coconut milk, fresh tamarind, lit­tle red chiles, lemon­grass, galan­gal, and even fish sauce. I’m thrilled to have found great fish that is cheap (Rock­fish — big, red, and ugly, but they’ll filet it for you for free, so you have a lovely, firm white flesh for curry or soup), and am sur­prised at how good the turkey is. I’ve cheated a lit­tle, and got­ten pre-marinated Maui Ribs, as well as Cor­nish Game Hens, and one of these days this sum­mer we’ll make a Caribbean Goat stew with the fresh goat meat we some­times see them cart in. The spot prawns are in this week, and every year I look for fid­dle­head ferns (in the Spring) and Okana­gan pears (in the Autumn).

All in all, Granville Mar­ket has expanded my diet, made me more in tune with the pas­sage of the sea­sons, low­ered my blood pres­sure (at least when I’m vis­it­ing, I think), and pro­vided me with a sense of con­nec­tion to my food with the peo­ple who grow it and sell it. It’s helped me learn to cook new and more com­pli­cated dishes, and also let me off the hook when I’m stumped and just get a home­made turkey pie or soup. I feel as if I’m richer and my life is health­ier and fuller with the mar­ket in it, which is about the most one can say about any activ­ity, espe­cially one as mun­dane as food shopping.