This is quite unlike any other market, more like a little village. The paths that meander or link and many of the stalls are permanent things, laid and built in the troubling 1970s, to last, rather than popping up. It’s Jozi’s oldest outdoor market but its contents continue to change according to the times, and now is the time of food.

This is why I sometimes wonder if the word “organic”, often used as the middle word in the name, refers to the produce sold at the Bryanston Market or to its own evolving life of content and style. Both, it seems.

I’m making discoveries, having surprises, finding some favourites and some weird stuff. It goes for the stalls as well as the people that run them.

Someone who I think embodies the spirit of the Market is The Olive Man, not far from the entrance I used. Yes, he has Pienaarsrust olive oil that he makes from 17-year-old trees, a combo of Coratina and Frantoia olives, and he has the bottled olives themselves but there are also dried kumquats for cooking and there is kumquat marmalade, pickled guavas, prickly pear plants and prickly pear products when in season, wonderful pork fat. 

Then he sells farm proteas too, when in season and packages olive leaf tea. The last is a naturopathic treatment truly used since Ancient Egyptian times. 

Lennard Conradie is a chef married to the farmer’s daughter, using everything that grows or can be utilised on the farm by him, so that nothing goes to waste. He’s unusually enthusiastic and inventive, positive about what can be done, especially during our present times.

I love the way he recites the flavour of the olive oil, almost like poetry: “Green grass, almonds, baby tomatoes, field flowers….” And there is more. He uses the market to sell, of course, and for market research.

At Bryanston Market the stallholders are chosen for individuality so aren’t offshoots of any of the usual “markets gang”. Some holders have other businesses but I haven’t seen any of them or their products at other markets, apart from the online Bryanston Market.

Nico Visser is the market manager responsible for these stallholders and the high level of products and producers. He’s the one striding by, tanned legs in shorts, long blond hair flying. Quite by chance, I find he’s producing a Bryanston Market restaurant map that also includes the food stalls at this market because of such an interest in it at present. 

The food side accounts for 75% of the market’s turnover now, so no wonder. There’s been a delightful increase in food stalls for the same reason. 

I clutch two pieces of the early prototype of this map but, good map reader as I am, I’m lost when I try to pinpoint stalls or even ask the stallholders to find themselves on my map. Nico did emphasise it’s not nearly right yet. 

Pienaarsrust olive oils and tea – The Olive Man is a chef and has lots else. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

I am surprised at my not knowing about the fantastic Argentine Grill or the bigger Thai stand, Baan Bootsbar. I can see they are essential finds.

The Argentine Grill uses signage from its other business, the Churri Kings, so that’s visually confusing but his food is excellent. I plan to come back to stock up with empanadas. His wife says I should hurry because “they go so fast”. I’m ever a bad shopper.

As a true beef-country scion, Pablo Tesoriero informs me that he has 200 grams of grass-fed beef in these items. He also has some chicken ones. “Chicken is for people who don’t eat beef.” Yummy chimichurri, of course, goes with everything, like his grass fed steaks with grilled vegetables and bruschetta. There are always people devouring his products at the tables and benches opposite.

Christine and Joseph Macuga of Baan Bootsbar. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

After decades of so much would-be and nearly Thai food around, Baan Bootsbar pride themselves on being really Thai and the stand is a serious and busy place. Bootsbar is the stallholder’s mother’s name, as Thai as you get, and Baan is “house of”. A basket holding a plate of their typical dish hangs above the counter because here they specialise in egg noodles done with various accompaniments and also have rather beautiful rolls and pockets on display. I’ll certainly come back for anything they make. 

It’s not necessarily the cheesiest, most artisanal name, though those are the very descriptions of Flavourex. This stand is very well-stocked, full of the Jozi company’s all-natural cheeses from Weltevreden Park. The milk comes from Pretoria University’s all-natural dairy. I’m happily tasting an outstanding rosemary edam. Then I taste their cumin edam and a chilli one, their emmental, their parmesan and their fontina. They have a goat’s cheddar I’d be keen to get, but meantime I do like their goat’s gorgonzola and pecorino.

Within the market is no shortage of coffee spots at which to sit and cool the Converses and work out further food exploration, from the map pieces and from avenues leading away. I’m doing a lot of that coffee pausing and find the coffee I keep sniffing in the air and returning to is the Green Bean Roastery from the Casalinga property in Muldersdrift. It happens to be their Tanzanian.

But I pause for coffee too at the Rolly-y-Poly where the pile of wonderful bread and strew of pastries distract in the nicest way. I also find it to be next to the best sunny-shady space for a bit of blissing. 

And I keep pausing at The Daily Grind, maybe because it’s also a cool, sane spot and maybe because I like the smell of organic bacon being fried by Angelique the owner while I’m having coffee. Maybe also because she’s created interesting spaces within her place and uses the word ‘abundant’ a lot.

One of the stalls with products I love is the charcuterie called Country Road, from Nooitgedacht, with “parma” ham and coppa, salamis and, yay, pancetta for me. He doesn’t have any of his merguez Moroccan sausages today, sadly.  

Among the other characters I warm to during my time here is Nesh Singh of Urban FunGuy Farms, at a small table producing oyster mushroom foods and the actual growing bags. His version of calamari made of mushrooms is serious competition for most “Falklands” type calamari. He has mushroom biltong and more too.

The zucchini cupcake from Cammy’s. (Photo: Marie-lais Emond)

Cammy van Rensburg has been here for 13 years with her Cammy’s Kitchen, organic of course, but whole foods instead of necessarily vegan or vegetarian. We laugh about her feeding her non-vegetable-eating kids and husband their veggies in her gorgeous cupcakes. The chocolate zucchini cupcake is just one. 

She makes thin-crust pizza too that just seems nicer because she makes it with such verve. Just there, the area around her and the ice cream place next door, Scooped, is where people at the market bench tables are having the best time, regulars mostly.

Cammy van Rensburg makes food with verve. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

When they aren’t harbouring vegetables, I never quite get cupcakes but I meet Milana van Tonder of the Keto Kitchen and am blown away by her skills. All her cakes without flour and sugar are showpieces and the most beautifully decorated cupcakes in the land must be hers. 

Though I haven’t been here for a couple of years, wandering the Bryanston Market market as it is now, is quite wonderful for me, even dodging the odd, over-zealous touting types. None of them are food stallholders. 

The fresh produce from all such stalls couldn’t be fresher. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

I’ve been planning to do my fresh produce buying here though I’m finding that’s not quite as I imagined. There’s nothing wrong with the credentials of the three or four main fresh produce stalls or their holders. In fact, they’re all next to each other, out-organicking each other with creds. It’s just that some variety is missing. They sell very much the same things that couldn’t be fresher but could maybe be more varied and more relevantly local. I long to see the things that farmer friend Siphiwe Sithole sells, for instance. 

I thought the spice stand would be like that too, maybe too predictable. I am wrong and delighted to find that I can find the sweet, though not very spicy, Hungarian paprika. It’s often difficult to get when most people only sell smoked paprika. 

I am delighted to find sweet Hungarian paprika. (Photo: Marie-Lais Emond)

I check to see what I’ve bought because, although there are many more food places I’ve passed that maybe weren’t manned or where the stallholders were too busy, I’ve certainly found exciting places. So far I’ve only bought about seven coffees, pancetta from the charcutier, tinned artichokes from the Italian deli that I need for a lunch, pecorino that I could also have bought from Flavourex and the already eaten zucchini cupcake from Cammy’s. I missed the empanadas, of course, from the Argentine Grill.

I’ll be back for the empanadas and to buy some Flavourex cheeses. I’ll get something from Baan Bootbar and I’d like to visit Cammy’s again and eat a thin pizza and have fun like the others outside her stall. DM/TGIFood

Bryanston Organic Market 40 Culross Rd, Bryanston. Open Thursdays and Saturdays. 011 706 3671 

There is a special Heritage Day market on Friday 24, September, from 9am till 3pm.

The writer supports Nosh Food Rescue, an NGO that helps Jozi feeding schemes with food ‘rescued’ from the food chain. Please support them here.