São Paulo open street markets – 5 tips for you to get the most of it.

“Feiras” are a São Paulo institution. We go to those street food markets for groceries, fresh fish, to prepare the menu for the week, to meet the neighbors or to sit for a delicious pastel with sugar cane juice. Wherever you live, there’s a day on the week when there will be a market close to you. Here are our tips for you to love it as we do.

Pastel

Going to the feira and not eating a pastel is a sacrilege. There will be other places where they sell pastel in town, but they are a genuine feira food. Maybe São Paulo’s ultimate street food, Pastel is a fried dough with all sort of different fillings, from sweet to savory, and it’s the perfect snack for that period between breakfast and lunch. In most of the feiras, if you order 4, the 5^th is for free!

Caldo de Cana

Literary it’s sugar cane juice. But in the mouth it brings you all the natural sugar of the fresh cane and drank cold it is very refreshing and an explosion of sweet deliciousness! Order that combined with other fruits, such as lemon, maracujá (passion fruit), tamarindo or pure and you will want to bring a litter back home when you leave São Paulo.

Bargain

It costs 5? Tell them you pay 3. Make a bigger bag with more products and ask vendors for a discount on the whole pack. And look around. That same pineapple might cost from 2 to 15 in the same lane! Watch the locals, hear the promos – prices change all the time at a feira and vendors will scream for everyone to hear when they put a product cheaper.

Prove everything

Brasil is a paradise for fruit and vegetable lovers. Our tropical lands make plants bloom and produce those veeeery tasty goods. Yes, you will find loads of exotic fruits at the market, but it’s that taste of a banana – straight from the farm to you – that will blow your mind. Vendors will spoil clients with bites of that very tasty fruit they are selling, so be hungry, be curious, prove it all!

Want it super cheap? Wait for the “Xepa”

If feiras are already a sorta cheap and convenient place to get fresh groceries, it gets cheaper and cheaper as the day goes by. For early birds it’s all about quality and getting the best ingredients for that special occasion, but if you want it cheap, I mean, impressively cheap at a point that you can spend R$10 to buy vegetables for a whole week menu, go for the “xepa”. Xepa is how we call the late minutes of a feira, right before it closes and vendors start putting all the stalls down. So it’s among the carrying of trucks – usually aroung 1pm or later – is when you find the day’s best deals.

When & Where:

There will be feiras happening every single day here in São Paulo. In fact, they are itinerant, and you might even bump into the same vendor in two different markets you go. Around the hostel there are a few, here they are:

Our pick! Saturdays – Mourato Coelho

Less than one block from the hostel, that’s the longest market and where we take all of our instagram market’s pics 😉

Sunday – Oscar Freire

Close to Sumaré metro station. Fancier – as the street is all about luxe, you can find beautiful flower stalls there too.

Tuesdays – Benedito Calixto

On Saturday Benedito Calixto hosts a flea market, but on Tuesdays the fruits & veggies are the star.

Thursdays – Rua Antonio Bicudo.

One of the largest as well, very near Ô de Casa Hostel