…and I did travel both.

Screw you, Frost.

I was going to call the post “A War of Two Farmers Markets,” but that wasn’t fair, because there really isn’t a war between the Trout Lake Market and the Granville Island Market. They’re just different. And one’s not really a farmers market.

trout-lake-2 — It was tomato fest at the Trout Lake Market the Saturday morning I went. There was a busker singing and people saying hi to neighbours as they picked up spouts, hummus, juice-dripping peaches and over 30 types of tomatoes.

The Trout Lake Market is a weekly market where farmers come directly from their farms with produce. Sure, there are urban honeys and crepe food trucks and the best hummus of my life, but it’s mostly farmers with their locally grown fruits and vegetables.

The Granville Public Market is very different. There’s more maple smoked salmon than I could eat in my lifetime, all boxed up nice and touristy, but there’s also a lot of imported grapes and lychees and dragon fruit that doesn’t taste anything like it did in Vietnam. Probably because it comes from Vietnam…and that’s far.

Granville is like a theme park, with art galleries and breweries and distilleries and boutiques. There are some crazy good-looking loaves of bread and pastries, but there are kitschy things like strumpets, too. Maybe they’re awesome?

Anyway, here are the markets in photos and video, so you can see (and hear) the differences for yourself.