Kensington Market and St Lawrence

Kensington is a few blocks west of Chinatown where successive waves of arrivals, Jewish, Portuguese, Caribbean, Latin American, East and South Asian, each left a layer of shops behind, so a single street runs from a Jamaican patty counter to a Portuguese fishmonger to a Mexican grocer without changing character. It is deliberately shabby, resistant to chains, and on Pedestrian Sundays in the warmer months the cars are removed and the street fills. St Lawrence, on the other side of downtown, is the opposite: a covered market operating on the same site since 1803, with a south hall of butchers, cheesemongers and fishmongers under a vaulted roof, and a Saturday farmers' market that starts at five in the morning.

What you actually see

• Kensington's shopfronts - a hundred small independent grocers and counters.
• Pedestrian Sundays - the market closed to cars in the warmer months.
• St Lawrence south hall - butchers and cheesemongers under a vaulted roof.
• The peameal bacon sandwich - the city's own sandwich, sold at the market.

When to go

May to October for Kensington, when the pedestrian Sundays run and the street life is at its best; the market trades year-round but winter thins it. St Lawrence is best on a Saturday morning for the farmers' market, and closed on Mondays.

Honest expectations

Kensington is genuinely scruffy and some visitors expecting a polished market district are put off; it is also under steady pressure from rising rents. St Lawrence has become tourist-heavy and the north building has been under long-term redevelopment, so the farmers' market has moved around. Neither has much seating for eating what you buy.

Nearby

Chinatown adjoins Kensington; the Distillery District is east of St Lawrence.