St. Lawrence Market: a Toronto guide to eating and shopping

Choose when to go, find the right market building, and make room for lunch and groceries. This guide turns St. Lawrence Market into a manageable visit with a few purposeful stops.

By Steven VanSources checked September 12, 20267 min read

A tree-lined street outside Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market. — An archival view of St. Lawrence Market, photographed in 2022. Jacob Rens / CC BY-SA 4.0

For a first St. Lawrence Market visit, start with the South Market, choose one lunch stop, then shop both retail levels before buying anything awkward to carry. Add the North Market if you are coming on Saturday for the farmers’ market. Setting those priorities is more useful than trying to eat at every counter.

This is a working food-shopping destination as well as a visitor attraction. A good visit can be a sandwich and a browse, groceries for dinner, or a longer Saturday morning. The route below helps you choose without treating a list of famous foods as an obligation.