Mercado 1 de Surquillo

This guide to Mercado 1 de Surquillo in Lima opens before dawn, among fishmongers dragging crates across wet concrete, and traces the market's no-middleman model back to around 1940. You'll hear how the city's most celebrated chefs quietly built a supply chain through these narrow aisles, and how chef Gaston Acurio has pushed to give the market formal recognition without losing what makes it work. Stand at the corner of Paseo de la Republica and Narciso de la Colina to feel it: not a shop dressed up as a market, but the supply chain itself.