Tuesday Market / Tianguis de los Martes

The Tianguis de los Martes (Tuesday Market) is a giant market held every Tuesday across the Queretaro road from the Luciernega mall above town. It stretches nearly 1,000 feet under giant tarps and beneath them just about anything is for sale: seasonal and imported produce, antiques, blown glass, hand-carved furniture, pirated DVDs, computers, tablets, boom-boxes, hand made huraches, Barbie dolls, goldfish, pet birds, tools, bicycles, buttons, used and new clothes, fresh fish, local honey and cheeses. Vendors are not all from San Miguel, but work a circuit of similar weekly outdoor markets in Queretaro and Guanajuato. There are scores of food stalls here (try “Huaraches Féliz,” a kind of taco made on sopes the size of a shoe sole).

Good and Cheap Eats at San Miguel’s Tuesday Market
In San Miguel, you can eat hi-brow and low, local and imported, by candlelight and streetlight. Your choice–and a lot of choice there is. But if you really want to “get” what and how the locals eat–how they’ve probably been eating for centuries–you can’t do better than to go to the “Tianguis,” or Tuesday Market. First spend an hour or so wandering the market aisles, checking out the hundreds of stalls and working up an appetite. Mountains of strawberries and piles of potatoes, tarps arrayed with used wrenches and used saddles, live birds, stacks of second-hand clothes and bolts of flower-bright Mexican oilcloth will catch your eye. Make-up and music (mostly pirated), fresh fish and flip-flops, wool yarn and witchcraft potions… it’s here if you want it. Feel free to haggle if you know how. But you came to eat. And the choice is wide and deep. Early in the morning finds stall workers breakfasting on menudo (tripe stew). For lunch, the tacos de cecina (Mexican corned beef) are traditional and delicious. Or try the green–very green–chorizo sausages with briny veggies, hot sauce and a twist of lime.There are gorditas, tostadas, sopes and guisados. You don’t really need to know what the words mean. Just smile and point. For the less adventurous who want something vaguely familiar, there are tacos of every stripe. I like the chicken in dark mole sauce and tacos al pastor with fresh pineapple chunks on top. Just go. Just pick something. Just eat it. Then smile.
By Donna Meyer