Weighing up Melbourne’s markets: Cheapest, freshest, best vibes

Ora Degani is finishing up her weekly shop at the Queen Victoria Market, her shopping trolley laden with bread, fruit, vegetables and fish.

“One of the beautiful things of going shopping at a market is you never know what you are going to get,” she says. “We always try to get what’s fresh and what looks the best.”

A shopper buys bread at the Queen Victoria market on Friday. Credit: Wayne Taylor

Degani has been shopping at the Queen Victoria for 40 years and, like many Melburnians, she feels a particular loyalty towards her market of choice.

“It’s cheaper and the choice is much greater there than a supermarket,” she says. “In a supermarket you have one orange to choose, here there are so many oranges.”

As the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite, Melbourne’s market traders say they are seeing an increase in new customers joining the regulars.

The Sunday Age visited six of Melbourne’s most popular markets over the course of a week: the Queen Victoria Market, South Melbourne Market, Preston Market, Prahran Market, Footscray Market and Dandenong Market.

We compared the experience at each – a vibe check, if you will – and looked at prices across stalls to get a taste of the cost of a basket of goods: broccoli, bananas, potatoes, beef mince, a leg of lamb, flathead tails and prawns.

Prices differed markedly between the markets and from stall to stall, but Footscray and Dandenong were the cheapest overall, with bargains including a leg of lamb for $9.99 a kilo and bananas at $1.99 a kilo.

Dandenong Market

Women wearing hijabs browse the aisles of the Dandenong market where stores sell heaps of fragrant spices and bags of different varieties of nuts.

The customers reflect the suburb’s multicultural makeup with large Afghan, Indian, Sri Lankan and Pakistani populations in Dandenong.

In the fruit and vegetable aisles a sign warns “please ask before eating” while a spruiker calls out “one dollar, one dollar, one dollar” standing over bags of small, plump eggplants.

In the section named The Bazaar there are stores selling ugg boots and puffer jackets, another selling cacti and a watch repair store.

Prices across markets and from stall to stall, but Dandenong was one of the cheapest.Credit: Simon Schluter

Bakery Kabul Kitchen – owned by friends Ali Haidari and Mohammad Sarwari, who came to Australia as refugees by boat and spent time in the same detention centre on Christmas Island before finally meeting years later – has a cult following at the market.

They specialise in hot naan bread, baked in the tandoor oven and served still warm.

Footscray Market

The seafood stallholders are starting to pack up at the Footscray market, emptying trays of ice as live lobsters and fish regard them from giant tanks.

John and Kevin’s Fresh Seafood, or Buttacavoli’s as it’s known by locals, has already shut up shop for the day.

It’s an institution at the market – the only stall still owned by the same owners and trading for over forty years. It also claims to be the only fishmongers in Australia without a freezer.

Play and purchase at Footscray Market. Credit: Justin McManus

“All the fish they buy from the wholesale markets they sell fresh that day,” says Footscray resident and long-time market shopper Joyce Watts. “Once they’re sold out they shut the shop. If you go early enough they will fillet your fish on the spot and all their salmon is sashimi grade.”

In the food court, customers are transported to Asia by the air fragrant with the smell of fresh mint and short metal stools clustering around stores selling bowls of pho and bun.

Produce on offer at the fruit and vegetable shops include green papaya, custard apples, bitter melon and carefully packaged but potent smelling durian.

Gold lucky cats are a popular ornament for stallholders, their paws waving slowly in the air and contemplating the shoppers headed for the adjoining nail salon or Tattslotto store.

Watts says when the market opened in 1982 it was dominated by the Italian, Greek and Maltese communities, but now it’s known for its Asian produce with many hard to get and unusual ingredients.

“It’s still a place where migrants come to make a living for themselves and that’s the story of the whole market,” she says.

Prahran Market

It’s a quiet weekday lunchtime at the Prahran market but there are still queues for the gourmet cheese toasties at Anthony Femia’s cheese store Maker & Monger.

Customers at the Prahran market this week. Credit: Simon Schluter

Prahran bills itself as the market for foodies with specialty shops such as the Mushroom Man who stocks 40 different types of mushrooms and Naheda’s dips which has become popular on social network TikTok.

“Have you been here before?” the woman behind the counter at Naheda’s asks. “You have to try the bomb,” she says – a combination of two dips layered in one tub which she describes as “bombtastic”.

Trader Gary McBean has been at Prahran Market for 48 years, starting out as an 11-year-old at his father’s butchers shop raking the floor back in the days it was covered in sawdust.

“There’s a strong sense of community,” he says. “People really support the local market, I have been serving the same customers for 30 years.”

Gary McBean at his butchers store at the Prahran Market. Credit: Simon Schluter

McBean says even though his prices are expensive – some dry-aged steaks sell for $199 a kilo – the high cost of living actually means his butcher’s shop is a little busier.

“Our customers still go out, but they don’t buy steaks any more,” he says. “It’s expensive to eat out, so people would rather cook their steak at home and if they go out they eat pasta.”

Preston Market

The future of the Preston Market has hung in the balance for years due to a longstanding feud over a proposed residential development at the site.

However, a reprieve was granted in the form of five-year leases for stallholders and the market is bustling with shoppers carefully assessing the piles of fruit and vegetables underneath a sign that reads “affordable value”.

Stalls at the Preston Market.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Friends from when their kids were babies, Jen McKinney and Jackie Goatcher have been coming to the Preston Market to meet for lunch and do their shopping every Friday for the last few years.

“People are friendly it’s a nice happy environment with good prices,” Goatcher says. “I like the cheaper cuts of stuff and the offal, you can get any part of any animal you want here.”

They live in Ivanhoe and drive to the market. Goatcher says she used to shop at the Queen Victoria market but now prefers Preston.

“It has a bit more of a vibe and it’s not so hectic,” she says. “You don’t have to queue, you don’t have to fight people for space.”

South Melbourne Market

It’s 10.30am at the South Melbourne Market and already people are standing in clusters at bar tables around Aptus Seafood eating bamboo plates of fresh crayfish for $44.99.

One woman films the other poised with her fork about to dig into the white flesh on their mobile phone while just down the aisle at Ralph’s Meats a butcher is bantering with a customer about the upcoming Collingwood game.

Customers eat fresh seafood outside Aptus Seafood. Credit: Wayne Taylor

Well-heeled shoppers can spend $80 on a bottle of imported olive oil in the deli aisle before visiting Hagen’s organic butcher fitted out with peach terrazzo tiling – more reminiscent of a day spa than a butcher’s shop.

However, there are also shoppers filling up their bags with fresh produce like bananas for $2.99 a kilo or waiting in line for the croissants and burnt basque cheesecake at Agathe Patisserie which are so popular that the store has had to set up a special queuing system with ropes like a nightclub.

Queues for pastries at Agathe Patisserie at the South Melbourne Market are nightclub style. Credit: Jacob Pattison

There’s a fresh pasta shop, a store specialising in soft white balls of burrata and a Polish deli where shoppers can buy gypsy sausages and onion herrings.

The market isn’t limited to food, shoppers can also get a haircut at Mister Handsome Barber Shop, get their eyebrows threaded and pick up anything from a terrarium to a rug for their home.

Queen Victoria Market

Shoppers in the deli hall at the Queen Victoria market browse the historic counters groaning with wheels of cheese, sliced meats and loaves of freshly baked bread.

The market first opened on 20 March 1878 and while a lot has changed in that time, some things have stayed the same.

Trader Nancy Policheni at the Queen Victoria market on Friday. Credit: Wayne Taylor

Tourists wander the aisles brushing shoulders with school kids on a tour and regular shoppers with their trollies loaded with produce.

“Marinated kangaroo fillet,” one says, peering through the glass at a butchers counter. “Can’t take that back in the carry on.”

A new food hall opened last year and parts of the market are still a construction zone but locals like the Friends of Queen Victoria Market group are watching closely to make sure any changes retain the market’s spirit.

Trader Nancy Policheni has run her stall at The Apple Corner for 29 years and says it’s not an easy job with 3am starts to set up, but it’s the relationship with her customers that keeps her going.

“The market has got something for everyone,” she says.

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