Goa’s oldest market, tasted properly.
The Friday market has run in Mapusa for four hundred years. It is loud, it is not arranged for visitors, and almost nobody who comes for an hour finds the good stalls. We spend three hours and eat at eleven of them.
The good parts are at the back.
The sausage line
Eight stalls in a row, and only two of them curing their own.
The spice aisle
Kokum, tirphal and dried prawns, sold by smell rather than by label.
The sweet stalls
Bebinca, dodol and perad, cut to order from the tray.
The market is a Friday, and only a Friday.
There is a daily market in the same building, and it is not the same thing. If you are in Goa Saturday to Thursday, this walk cannot happen — we would rather say so than sell you the small version.
It runs every Friday of the year, including through the monsoon, when it moves further under cover and gets better. It opens at 06:30 and peaks from 08:00 to 10:00; by noon the produce sellers have gone.
Two starts, one morning.
Early, 07:00 start · three hours
You arrive with the sellers and eat before the crowd, which is the whole argument for it.
Later, 09:00 start · two and a half hours
Easier going, more room to talk to people, less choice at the sweet stalls.
Private, by arrangement
Same route at your own pace, and the only version where we can work around allergies properly.
Six corners, eleven stalls.
We walk the whole route before anybody buys to take home. It is the single most useful rule on the walk and the hardest one to follow.
What we tell everyone at the start
Mapusa Market Foodies
Come hungry, and come early.
Everything you eat on the walk is paid for by us at the stall, in cash, at the price a local pays. The rest is getting there and waiting to buy.
Come hungry rather than fed
You will eat enough that you will not want lunch afterwards.
Allergies at booking
Tell us when you book, not on the day — several stalls cannot work around them at all.
Getting to Mapusa
Transport is not included. It is forty minutes from Panaji.
Parking fills by 07:30
The bus stand lot is five minutes away. Come earlier than you think, or take a taxi.
Meet outside, not in
The garden corner opposite the main entrance — it is impossible to find anyone inside.
Wait before you buy
Anything to take away is yours to pay for, and the same thing is better and cheaper at the back an hour later.
Fridays fill about ten days out.
Groups of eight maximum. We do not take commission from any stall on the route, and we will tell you if that ever changes.