A trip to the Deira Fish Market

A couple of Fridays ago, the 3 of us - Gwen, Sihan, and myself -  embarked on a journey... A journey that we've always talked about, but never really did anything about. This journey was to a place called the Deira Fish Market. It's what we call a wet market in Singapore, only difference is that... it's really really wet.

All dressed in old and unwanted clothes and flip flops, we began on our short journey. Mandy the school bus (it's actually a Nissan Armada... but huge enough to qualify as a school bus) came to get me early in the morning at 6:30. We would have gone at 5 in the morning if we hadn't stayed up playing Guitar Hero the night before.

From the car park, we could smell the aroma... of the fish and other things (you get my point). Stepping out of the car, I almost immediately felt uncomfortable - because of the humid air and heat, and the stares of workers / labourers of the fish market all dressed in blue overalls.

They have this system whereby you have an opportunity to hire a market staff (the guys in blue overalls) only for a fee of 5dhs (abt USD$1.35). These (MIB - Men in Blue) have a wheel barrow and start pushing them around after you as you walk around the market buying stuff.

(ok... they don't normally wait for you in the position as seen in the picture)

The things here come from all over the world. Mostly local, but you do get mud crabs from India (just becareful not to get those that are dead, and short of a few legs and claws). So pick them yourselves!

Although, I must say, the vegetables were unrecognizable. They were nice and pretty, but NOT labelled. So we were half trying to figure out (recognise) which vegetables was Kang Kong so we could have a sambal kang kong dish. The store keeper looked at us with disbeliefs (because apparently we were women who couldn't recognise vegetables).

What a tragedy.

There one can also find rows and rows of stalls selling fish, prawns, crabs, sotongs (squid)... and also a butcher section, and fruits & veg section that has decent variety and good quality items... but only sold in bulk. (Though we did manage to buy a Malaysian papaya at an exhorbitant price of 30dhs - or close to USD$10).

It was there I got my education of which fish is what when the store keeper laughed at me when I lacked the ability to recognise fish species. Just like the indian dude at the vegetable store. He said... "You don't know? You no cook?". I think it was then he realised he could cheat me by selecting the worse looking fish of the lot... (which was still probably better than those you find at the supermarket anyway).

The method of sale is still fairly traditional via the use of beam balancing, and utilising standard weight masses to balance the purchases made. You either buy in half kilos or by multiples of kilos. The men were horrified when I said I only wanted ONE white Pomfret. He didn't know how to charge me for one... because it was less than the minimum weight mass piece he had, and the beam balance just wouldn't balance.

The huge prawns were really really cheap though! (something like half the price as compared to that in the supermarket). And was still very yummy even after a week when we cooked it.

Likewise with the fruits. we wanted to buy like 3 sharon fruit (persimmons). We ended up getting the whole box after getting the evil eye from the store keeper. But Sihan got her way with only buying a few peaches (though I think she paid for half a kilo of it)

They do have a cleaning service for whatever you want to clean, but at very high prices (in my opinion). Unless one has adverse reaction to gutting fish and brushing scales, I think it's better to do it on your own. We paid 40dhs (more than USD$10) to gut 3 fishes.

I think this place is worth a visit back, though I highly doubt it'll be part of my regular weekly stock up on food. At the end of our adventure, we left with 3 crab with 2 missing legs on one, a few fishes, quite a large amount of big big big prawns, a few squids, an overpriced papaya (but it came from malaysia), donut peaches, persimmons, peaches, three happy people glad that the journey was over, and last but not least, one happy worker who was paid 5dhs and another 5dhs as a tip (or rather he asked for it), and of course I'm sure he'll take a cut from the fish gutters (or whatever you call those people).

Pictures are courtesy of Sihan...