One Fish, Two Fish…

… Salted Fish, Smoked Fish:  Riga's Central Market

Here is something you won't see very often:  a real, honest-to-goodness central food market housed in real, honest-to-goodness converted Zeppelin hangars -- five of them!  Yes, Zeppelin hangars…  which at one point housed real Zeppelins!

And we're not talking about the urban hipster's dream of Ye Olde farmers' market, offering hypoallergenic, clover-scented cheese made from the milk of Alpine goats who've grazed strictly on fields of four-leaf clover.  Oh, no.  Oh, no, no, no....

Here, just a short walk from Old Town and right behind Riga's Central Train Station, you will find a whole side of pork freshly split by the gentleman wielding the axe behind the meat counter, if that's what you're looking for.  If it is fish you are searching for, please enter the next hangar, where you will find the fresh sturgeon, trout, and flounder you've been dying to cook -- of course taking care to sidestep that gigantic fish that just jumped out of its bin and is now flapping on the floor on its imagined way back to the Baltic Sea.

This market is, in other words, THE REAL THING!

Riga's Central Market from the top of St. Peter's Church

The idea for this fantastic market dates to just after World War I, when the Riga City Council looked for a more permanent and sanitary space for the market stalls alongside the Daugava river.  To house the new market, the City Council decided to use the Zeppelin hangars left behind in Latvia by the German army.  Architects and engineers went to work to ensure that the structures could function as market halls, and devised a plan to use the top part of the hangars as the roofs of the pavilions, with brick and reinforced concrete walls holding up the heavy structures and providing temperature control for the Baltic climate.

By 1930 the market was operational, and it was the largest and most modern in Europe.  There was central heating and lighting, and underneath the market there was a network of tunnels to allow the movement of goods to and among the pavilions, as well as 27 freezers with a capacity of over 300 tons!

And Riga's Central Market was important during the Soviet period as well.  It was considered the best market in the Soviet Union, and sold products from 60 collective farms.  It is now part of a joint stock company managed by the Riga City Council, which also manages other, smaller markets in town.  It is a real market, used by all type of shoppers, but it is also increasingly a tourist destination, thanks to its history and breathtaking architecture (Jugendstil details decorate the pavilions as well.)

There are five pavilions, each with its own specialty market:  meat, fish, vegetables, dairy, and a gastronomy market, where you can find items like hemp butter.  (Yes, really -- and it's actually quite tasty.)  Outside the pavilions, there are additional stalls where everything from produce to shoes and clothes is sold.

Open Air Stalls

The Meat Pavilion

I loved the meat pavilion, where the aforementioned butcher whacked away at some huge slabs of beef, and a whole pig's head advertised the pork specials.

The Vegetable Pavilion

The vegetable pavilion had beautiful stacks of vegetables imported from other climates, like all sorts of peppers and eggplants, as well as Latvian specialties, like pickled cabbage, pickled beets, and pickled… pickles!

Cabbage and beets

Also in the vegetable pavilion, in a corner, is a fabulous Uzbek bakery, which makes different types of  Uzbek bread, called non, in a traditional oven.  This is also the real thing, as my friend Elya, who is from Uzbekistan and who showed me this place, assured me.

Making Uzbek Bread

Traditional Uzbek Oven

But for me, the most interesting (and entertaining) pavilion was the fish pavilion.  In addition to fresh fish of all kinds, from salmon to trout to flounder, and even sturgeon, there are vendors of some very Latvian products:  salted fish, typically herring; smoked fish of an incredible variety, from flounder to eel; and dried fish.

Fresh Sturgeon and Trout

Smoked Mackerel

Smoked Flounder

Smoked Eel

Salted Herring (in Front)

Dried Roach

Seeing all this smoked fish made me want to find out more about how it's made, so I went to the Jurmala Open Air Museum, but that's for another post….