A market needs to either have charm/atmosphere or be functional and/or profitable. With a little more space inside but without doubt all around the outer edges Stockbridge market has all three (4!)
a mixture of luxuries/gifts, art and (cooked) food, the clothing is novelty and/or specialist e.g wool 'chicken' hats, knock off M&S cashmere.
There is so much to see and admire but, it is so busy, with people buying their specialist cheeses, meats, olives and bread (for their gourmet work sarnies), organic veg, condiments and of course eating that it is strenuous to negotiate.
We missed the pulled pork! The queue was actually one of the shorter ones, then I shillied and shallied, dillied, then it was all finished and I was gutted. However the people running the store were a wonder to behold, shit hot planners and executors of the market trade. While most of the food stalls were visibly under stress, the Pulled Pork people has their system DOWN! As I said no long lines, they maintained a level of clockwork efficiency that waxes here lyrical. Repaid by being able to pack up early, (efficiently), clearly harmoniously and happily completely sold out.
The brownie lady put up a sign 'away for 5 minutes'. I checked back 4x and tried to have a giggle (joke/contact) with all the other people who came up in the (timed) 90 seconds I waited. the results Yes/No Scots 60/40, Spanish (speakers) 85/15, Yanks 0/100, English accent (English or Edinburgh) 20/80 - she didn't show up.
boThe art is varied, lots of painting, jewellery, sewing. One woman with some quite exquisite work should either be nicer to her customers - I had to buy one piece and would have ught two but she was such a **** - or she's a bigot and she didn't allow photos!
The paella was the most popular dish everywhere you looked (there were lots of Spanish speaking people) people carried the well sized containers packed with fluffy, golden-yellow rice all around the outside of the beautiful, tree'y, green, stoned walled and stepped, metal fenced space to sit and enjoy. The portions were unfortunately too large for my desires for the evening!!
In the end I had the gyoza's 6 for 5 quid - they were not great but may have been better early before the guy cooking them got the totally stressed out energy in which they were prepared. One of my imagination fairy's got forebodings at the well planned but stressy execution of the big white man and the two functioning nervously on automatic pilot small South East Asian women 'working efficiently....
I loved all the many different paintings of Scottish cows (kooos), but only took a photo of one because the lass was super friendly and helpful
"All the paintings are on the website, here's the card, don't use up your phone storage!"
