Mercado de Abastos de San Francisco
Tucked into a 19th-century iron-and-brick market hall a few streets from the cathedral, the Mercado de San Francisco is where Jaén's cooks, chefs and serious home cooks do their real shopping — and where a visitor can taste the province's pantry in concentrated form in under an hour.
What to Buy and Taste
The olive oil stalls are the centrepiece: vendors offer small plastic cups of freshly pressed Picual extra-virgin oil for tasting, and the difference between a supermarket bottle and the peppery, grassy stuff poured straight from a local almazara is genuinely shocking.
Look for the stalls selling pipirrana jaenera — a local salad of tomato, pepper, tuna and hard-boiled egg dressed heavily in local oil — sold ready-made in small tubs as a take-away lunch that costs almost nothing.
The Social Ritual
By 09:30 on any weekday morning the market bar at the back is three-deep with traders, delivery drivers and retired men drinking café con leche and eating tostadas con tomate y aceite — toast rubbed with tomato and drowned in olive oil, the Andalusian breakfast that ruins all other breakfasts forever.
The fish section at the far end surprises visitors: despite being landlocked, Jaén receives daily deliveries from Almería and Málaga, and the display of fresh espetos-ready sardines, boquerones and red prawns is impeccable.
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