BH markets alternate day and night with bars that bring together from the ‘modern’ to the hungry

Markets are mandatory programs for tourists interested in delving a little deeper into the culture of a destination. Visiting them is the easiest way to absorb a little bit of the soul of a city, in a matter of minutes or a few hours, using only your legs and sensory perception.

Belo Horizonte goes further: markets are the main attraction there. No visit to the city is worth noting without visiting the Central Market, its cheeses and delicacies. The neighboring Mercado Novo has recently become the most interesting nightlife in the capital of Minas Gerais, with bars and restaurants and, shall we say, modern people.

The two markets have intertwined histories since their genesis. More than competitors, they are complementary. When one falls asleep, the other wakes up. Let’s start in the morning, therefore, at the Central Market.

As a practicing paulistano, I am unable to assess the Minas Gerais market without comparing it to the Municipal Market on the Tamanduateí floodplain.

Starting with the building: the Belo Horizonte market is not imposing like its cousin in São Paulo. It is condensed into cramped, somewhat claustrophobic spaces. The stores are distributed in a square with concentric aisles, which leads to the total disorientation of the visitor.

But nobody takes advantage of the confusion to apply the fruit blow to tourists. Here and there, there are unmistakable signs of a tourist trap, without, however, reaching heights such as the triplex bologna sandwich. A muggle charm is part of any such attraction.

The trap is easy to spot: it’s where the crowds go. In the case of Mercado Central, the bar that serves eggplant liver baits, packed with people drinking beer at 11 am on a Thursday.

Nor is it difficult to identify the tradition that persists. It is in the nature of the stores—tobacconists, lemonade kiosks, riding gear, candles and incense, peppers and spices in general—and also in their names.

Fifteen of the shops in the Central Market claim some kind of monarchical nobility: King of the Shrieks, King of Cracklings, Queen of Sausage, Empire of Potatoes. Others, very Minas Gerais, bet on names that refer to matuta humility. Comercial Sabiá, for example.

It was there that, on the recommendation of a friend, I stopped to have a cheese bread stuffed with ham and, yes!, more cheese as Minas Gerais (R$ 16), all heated on the grill until the extra cheese melted.

There was a problem. In the greenhouse, an ostentatious notice was real: “We do not accept checks, credit cards, debit cards.” Do you accept pix? Not.

I addressed the woman at the cashier. She pointed at the ATM behind me, almost brushing my ass. “But ma’am, I left without a wallet. I only brought my cell phone.” The cashier shrugged. I didn’t give up, that had become a point of honor.

I approached an aunt who was taking money and convinced her to withdraw R$20 that would be replaced by a pix. Suspiciously, she handed me the ballot as soon as I showed her the deposit slip. Point to Sao Paulo. Point for Minas Gerais.

The tiebreaker would come when I finally got my teeth into that cheese bread. Another point for Minas Gerais! Final result: 2×1.

Tradition can be seen in the obsession with cheese, cachaça, pork, in the very sweet juice of the Traditional Limonada (R$ 2.50, 200 ml), in the spectacular and volcanically hot pies (R$ 5.50) at Ponto da Empada —the most famous is the jiló, they suggested the cheese one and I didn’t regret ordering the chicken with olives, moist and tasty with all the coxinha it should be.

The nose smells tradition even when you turn a corner and come across a corridor full of live animals, some to kill and eat, others to let live: they are cages with chickens, ducks, geese, peacocks, goats and even dogs. The permanence of these stores is a clash, which has dragged on for decades, between the market and the health authorities.

It was such a clash, by the way, that gave rise to the Mercado Novo, half a kilometer away.

At the beginning of the 1960s, the Central Market was a fixed open market, made of masonry, but without a roof and somewhat unhealthy. “Mayor Jorge Carone [1963-65] wanted to evict traders for sanitary reasons”, says historian Alessandro Borsagli, from PUC-MG.

The New Market was built as a complement, perhaps a substitute, for the other market, in a modernizing rush of the city hall. “They ended the tram service and built the building where the workshop for these trams was”, says Borsagli.

The plan went wrong, as it often does. The shopkeepers of the Central Market got together, bought the land and hurried to solve the structural and sanitary issues. The old market blew, and the new flop.

Mercado Novo, a four-story modernist building, was underoccupied and dormant until the end of the last decade. The basement housed — still houses — a market for fruit and vegetables at dawn.

The other floors sparsely housed old-fashioned shops and workshops – especially typography, which attracted artists and designers in search of vintage aesthetics.

Designer Rafael Quick, who stocked his bar in this hortifruti, started the colonization of Mercado Novo in 2018. He and his partners opened a brewery and restaurant in a corner of the second floor, Cozinha Tupis, and took with them all the nightlife of Belo Horizonte.

Quick outfitted its stores with the services already in place at Mercado Novo – and indoctrinated newcomers to do the same. “It was a job of convincing and raising awareness,” he says. “I spent eight months giving lectures on Saturday mornings.”

This resulted in a relative aesthetic uniformity of the points on the second floor of the market – the ground floor continues with the fair, and the first level, with the old workshops. An agreement was also temporarily respected determining that the stores did not compete for the same customer.

Thus, those who sold food did not sell drinks. You get a meal at Tupis (for example, an olive, potato and quail egg appetizer, R$ 42) and go to Lamparina to drink some of the most delicious drinks ever made with cachaça (bombeirinho, made with hibiscus infusion and other things, R$ 18).

The second floor also has themed restaurants with a wood stove, snacks in the greenhouse (an obsession from Minas), “pão moiado” (sandwich with lots of sauce), seafood in the Capixaba style and even a “pãodequeijaria”.

On the third floor, with more recent occupation, cocktail bars and American barbecue, the atmosphere is definitely more bourgeois. In the end, all audiences mingle.

Hordes of young, wealthy people, call them hipsters or alternatives, fill the market every night. When it’s midnight and the bars close, there’s a possibility that you’ll meet the owner of the bodega and continue drinking well into the night—that was my situation.

There, the aisles of the market, dark and deserted, are taken over by skeletal cats that emerge from who knows where. The vigil can then continue in the underground fair until the opening of the Central Market. This is the 24-hour market from Minas Gerais.

SERVICE

Belo Horizonte Central Market. Av. Augusto de Lima, 744, downtown

New Market. Rua Rio Grande do Sul, 499, downtown.