Truly great cities all have one thing that Sydney doesn’t

People don’t know about Mercat de Sant Antoni just yet. I mean, locals do. This 140-year-old space is filled with the residents of Barcelona’s Sant Antoni neighbourhood every day, early morning to late at night, people shopping for fresh vegetables and fruit, high-end seafood, classic preserved meats, steaks and sausages. Even snails.

But the tourists haven’t inundated the place just yet, in the same way they have the Mercat de la Boqueria just a few metro stops away or even the Mercat de Santa Caterina nearby. Sant Antoni retains something of a local feel, where you’re more likely to bump into a resident on a fresh food mission than an influencer capturing social media content.

Local market hall Mercat de Sant Antoni in Barcelona, Spain.Credit: iStock

The market is the heart of its Catalan neighbourhood, too, a meeting place, a well-loved spot for the daily shop, and a venue that sprawls at various times of the week with second-hand clothing stalls and book fairs. It’s also spectacularly beautiful, a cross-shaped, wrought-iron structure that’s survived since 1882.

This market, of course, is not unique in Spain, as it is not in the vast percentage of the rest of the world. Almost every great city in the world has a great market.

London has Borough Market, which has run in its current location since 1756. Istanbul has the Grand Bazaar, where goods have been sold since 1455. Paris has multiple: the Marche des Enfants Rouges (1628), the Marche Saint-Quentin, the Marche Saint-Germain. Tokyo has its sparkling new Toyosu fish market and its charming old Tsukiji Outer Market.

Mexico City has incredible markets. Sao Paulo has markets. New York City has markets. Smaller cities such as San Sebastian in Spain and St-Jean-de-Luz in France have amazing markets. Visits to these places have provided some of the most memorable – and delicious – experiences of my travels.

Perfection: South Melbourne Market.Credit: Eddie Jim

Even in Australia, you can visit some greats. Melbourne has several of at least the southern hemisphere’s finest: South Melbourne Market is perfection; Prahran Market has great produce and a strong local vibe; while Queen Victoria Market is a genuine tourist attraction that has been there for almost 150 years. Adelaide, too, has its Central Market, which is world-class.

So … what’s going on with Sydney? Can you call yourself one of the world’s great cities when you don’t have a great market? Where do you tell visitors to Sydney to go when they want to shop for the best fresh produce and artisan goods like a local would, in a beautiful space surrounded by residents picking up a few of their favourite things?

Yes, Sydney has a few farmers’ markets and single-day gatherings: Carriageworks, Tramsheds, Ryde Wharf Market, Parramatta Farmers Market. But what about a permanent, covered space? Somewhere with a little more charm than Paddy’s? Somewhere that’s the genuine heart of its community, where you can buy all the best stuff, and where adjoining restaurants harness that fresh produce to create something even more beautiful?

On that front, Sydney is a wasteland. But maybe, slowly, things are going to get better. Paddy’s Market is about to have more appeal. On Wednesday, it unveils Hay St Market, a collection of 48 traders in a sparkling new space, with a butcher, a fishmonger, a deli, a grocer, plus two bars and a whole heap of restaurants that will be open into the night. That sounds promising.

But what of the Sydney Fish Market, the other mega-project in the works? You may have heard last week that it’s something of a schemozzle. As it is, the existing fish market – trashy, old, where you have to pay for parking just for the pleasure of spending more money on seafood – had become a tourist attraction due in large part, in my opinion at least, to Sydney having nowhere else to go.

A schemozzle: The new Sydney Fish Market.Credit: Edwina Pickles

So someone decided to build a new fish market, a gigantic, wow-we’ve-got-a-thing fish market, a very expensive fish market, a fish market that now seems to have mired many entities in bankruptcy and has had its opening pushed back time and again. The firm responsible for creating the new market’s fish-scale-like roof has collapsed. Construction giant Multiplex is seeking government support to keep the project afloat.

Sydneysiders seem to be questioning the worth of such a project now if comments on Sydney Morning Herald stories are anything to go by. This is money that could be spent on schools, people say. Or hospitals. Or roads.

But why does it have to be either/or? Why can’t we have nice things, as well as very necessary things? Why can’t this city have an icon, a tourist attraction, maybe even a local favourite, that is centred around food?

I’m embarrassed every time I visit the old fish markets, embarrassed for my city, to see whole coaches full of tourists pulling up at this shabby old den and not even being able to argue with their choice because where else would you send them? Where else can you pick up fresh seafood from multiple purveyors while also grabbing, say, a dozen oysters or some fresh-cooked fish to eat in the sun every day of the week?

Sydney likes to say it’s a foodie destination, and it really is; there are so many great places to eat in the city and a diversity of cuisine that I think is the strongest in the country. But it needs a market. A proper destination market. Maybe it didn’t need something as big and flashy as the new fish market, but hey, this is Sydney – big and needlessly flashy is this city’s jam.

Hopefully, the new addition to Paddy’s begins to fill the city’s need, and isn’t just a flash in the pan of celebrity chefs and food fads. And hopefully, it gets its new fish market. It was supposed to open this year. Now, maybe, it will open at the end of next year. It won’t be the same as Mercat de Sant Antoni, and certainly not the Boqueria. But it could still be great.