To Market, To Market: St. Lawrence Market

St. Lawrence Market is Toronto's oldest market site, started in 1803, the Market Block, so named by Lt. Governor Peter Hunter, extended from north of Front, west of Jarvis, south of King and east of Church Street. One of the original market buildings burned down along with much of Toronto in a fire in 1849. What stands today is the South Market and was build in the 1850s with alterations made to its facade over time. The North Market is currently undergoing a redevelopment to improve the site.

The South Market is open Tuesday to Saturday at various times and the North Market's temporary structure is open on weekends.

 

We visited mid-morning, mid-week and I was surprised at how busy it was. 

If you've been following along, I don't hide the fact that I love going to markets of all kinds, but particularly love food markets. We perused the aisles, scoping out all the fresh foods, hand made goods and traditional souvenir tat. 

If I lived in the neighbourhood I would definitely find myself here picking up produce, mowing down on a bacon butty (yes we have them too but with Canadian bacon!), sniffing the fresh breads.

We couldn't resist all the lovely looking items and decided to make ourselves a market picnic. We all purchased favourite items from the various vendors and parked our butts down at a table to stuff our faces. We had 2 kinds of perogies, a giant cabbage roll, a savoury pastry roll, fresh figs, and oodles of chocolate. This was definitely my favourite part of the visit. It's a great market to head back to again and again, and being pretty much the only game in town, you kind of have to*. Next up on the list; Kensington Market.

Do you like a market picnic as much as me? Let me know in the comments if you have any GTA market suggestions for me to visit next year.