16. Where to buy what
Despite the war, Odesa is a large city of more than a million people, all of whom want to be fed, sheltered and live their lives as comfortably as their wallets and circumstances allow. From cheap chain stores to luxury boutiques, Odesa has a wealth of options to satisfy all human shopping needs.
But these are probably the markets that first come to mind for both newcomers and locals alike when discussing shopping in Odes. Odesa is, after all, a city of markets, with the venerable Pryvoz standing out as the mother of them all. Established in 1827, Pryvoz sits on the same site where a market for mainly imported goods, known as привозные товары in Russian, once stood, hence its name.
Today, Pryvoz is the second-largest market in the city by area. The largest market in Odesa is the Seventh Kilometer Market (Ринок ‘Сьомий кілометр’), established in the 1960s located behind the airport. Despite its size, I’ve never visited the Seventh Kilometer, though it is reputedly one of the largest markets in all of southern Europe.
While the Seventh Kilometer Market may have surpassed Pryvoz in size, it is still Pryvoz that holds the title as the city’s most important market. Situated on the edge of Odesa’s city center, near the bus and railway stations, Pryvoz is not only a landmark in its own right but also where ordinary Odesites do their daily shopping.
One can buy pretty much everything from Pryvoz. My own numerous purchases include a decent pair of leather gloves, some horrible looking but very cheap sweatpants, a gray cotton sweater, but also a fantastic piece of lamb ribs that I baked on New Year’s Eve, some amazing pomegranates, couple of hot sausage rolls and a chunky shaurma from a nearby stall.
Pryvoz also sells footwear, underwear, fishing and hunting supplies, everything you need for beekeeping, frozen fish, both Middle Eastern and Ukrainian bread, freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, home-made wine, pickled radishes, fresh and dried spices, mushrooms of all kinds (be careful with them - last autumn there were two cases of mushroom poisoning with pickled mushrooms from Pryvoz, one case was fatal), a huge range of butter, cheese, milk, yogurt, sour cream ryazhanka, ayran and so on. And, of course, Pryvoz is also surrounded by jewelry shops, watch- and shoemaker’s, small notary offices, pawnshops, and countless fast-food kiosks where one can sit down or stand up and fill the belly for a reasonable price. One Uzbek stall is allegedly particularly good.
Although it is possible to buy everything from Pryvoz, it is precisely in terms of food choice that there is no equal to the market in Odesa and probably not in the whole of southern Ukraine, Moldova and north-eastern Romania. The meat hall alone is a market of a smaller scale, offering everything from a simple corn-fed chick to a lamb cutlet cut to the buyer’s specifications, as well as plenty of pork, beef, rabbit, duck, goose and turkey. Of course, there are also halal meat counters to satisfy the needs of fellow Muslims.
Fruit, vegetable vendors, and fishmongers have a roof-covered area at least the size of a football pitch. Depending on the season, the day of the week, and the time of day, there are more or fewer vendors and shoppers, but again: all needs are met. Not only are root vegetables grown in the rich local soil sold, but also all kinds of exotic fruits, their seeds, juice or preserves.
The selection of fish and seafood is awe-inspiring. Of course, the fish and molluscs from the Black Sea, the Danube and nearby rivers can be found fresh here, but the selection of seafood from more distant rivers, lakes and seas is also respectable.
And then the clothes. They’re available both in small, tightly packed booths as well as in larger, store-sized halls. Something to suit all tastes and price ranges, although... Yes - it’s more in the cheaper price range. But for those who aren’t too picky and need, for example, some nice home clothes where function is more important than form: why not.
In addition to Pryvoz, there are two other markets in the city center - New Market (Новий базар) and Old Horse Market (Старокінний ринок). While Pryvoz is south of the city center, the New Market is north-west and the Old Horse Market is east. Beyond the city center, there are many other markets, both large and small, in every district, in addition to the aforementioned Seventh Kilometer.
Both the New Market and the Old Horse Market are also moderately large. The Old Horse Market is even quite large, as it has its own niches or specialties - namely, the construction market that covers about half of the market’s area, and the pet market immediately adjacent to it. Anyone who wants to buy a big, furry spider or a small, furry dog - that’s the spot. Caution is advised here, however, as there are reportedly cases where, instead of an expensive Sphynx cat, the buyer has received a shaved kitten whose fur grew back a few weeks later...
The Moldavanka flea market is an institution in its own right. This is a weekend street market in the district Moldavanka, near the city center, whose commercial function is a little dubious, but what it lacks in the hard business sense, it more than makes up for in filling an important social role, representing for many of its participants a quintessence of the Odesa lifestyle.
The overall picture of the flea market is that the streets are lined with tables or simply bed sheets with goods placed on them. If the word ‘goods’ can be used, as the exchange and use value of many of the items for sale make one scratch one’s head.
The street market in Moldavanka kind of sells just about everything, but all the stuff I, at least, will never need, and although I’ve been there several times now, I’ve never had a real temptation to buy anything. Even the porcelain Mickey Mouse remained untouched after some hesitation, although I'm sure the 100-hryvnia (2.30 euros) price could have been bargained down...
Yet the question might arise, if the markets in Odesa are so impressive, why the shops and supermarkets at all. Well, for several reasons. Firstly, there are dozens of grocery stores downtown alone. Competition in the retail sector seems to be really fierce in Ukraine, and in all the major cities you can see both large nationwide chains like Silpo or ATB, and regional ones - Tavria V - or even local ones, like the Russian-named Odesa chain ‘Два Шага’ or ‘Two Steps’ - crowding in close to each other.
For the regular consumer, competition is of course a good thing: it drives down prices and forces shops to be more inventive. Almost all Ukrainian grocery chains, for example, offer freshly in-house bakes bread. The exact selection depends on the shop - in ‘Два Шага’, for example, they have good old-fashioned rectangular form white bread while Silpo has a decent selection of handmade breads in gargantuan sizes, which the shop assistant cuts by weight, in addition to wholemeal, multigrain and wheat baguettes.
Of course, fresh bakery bread is more expensive than sliced and wrapped bread, but the quality is also vastly superior.
As a general rule, local goods are cheaper than imported ones. In Ukraine, for example, it is possible also to get rye cripsbread made in Finland and Sweden, but the prices are also Scandinavian. With this in mind, it is not a bad idea to try a variety of local crispbreads with the generic name хлібці (singular хлібець), which are quite interesting, often containing or even made of pressed sunflower seeds or dried fruit.
Despite the abundance of goods in the shops, I never cease to be amazed at how bad, or rather odd, the spice selection even in the better larger supermarkets is. Most of the time, the spice shelves are filled with all sorts of satanic ready-made mixtures such as potato spice, fish spice or something similar. Selection of pure spices, however, is not fantastic. It is only when I found myself in a larger-than-life Auchan supermarket in Lviv that I am confronted with a shelf of spices, where I can find anything I like. However, as I said before, the markets are there to help, and even the most exotic spices can be found there.
Alongside the shops and markets, there is another simple way, widely loved by Ukrainians, to conveniently buy what one might not find in every shop. I am of course talking about online shopping.
While several of the biggest online stores also have their own physical outlets, the largest of them, Rozetka, is more than just an e-store. It’s an institution of sorts, with some of its outlets also functioning as regular shops. In addition, Rozetka acts as an intermediary, offering not only goods from Ukrainian producers and shops but also foreign products.
Delivery times are short and the whole procedure convenient. So it is not necessary to order the goods to Rozetka’s own delivery point, but it is also possible to choose a post office or parcel locker. In most cases there is no extra charge. Only ordering goods directly to home is more expensive. Additionally, all major grocery stores now offer home delivery services, and above a certain sum the service costs nothing.
Although prices in Ukraine are very reasonable for foreigners - but not for locals - there is one product group that is expensive in Ukraine, not only in relative terms but also in absolute terms. This is consumer electronics. As mentioned earlier: imported goods are generally more expensive than local products. And this is particularly true of electronics. Mobile phone prices tend to be a quarter or a third more expensive than in the European Union in general. The same is true of irons, laptop and desktop computers, televisions and anything else that runs on electricity. Whether the high prices are due to the war, I am afraid I cannot say.
But on the subject of the war: prices are prices, yet everything is available, and if there are some products that I personally feel are lacking (I mentioned spices earlier, and I also haven’t found frozen meatballs), it’s not because of a lack of supply, but because of cultural differences.
There are only a few shopping malls in Odesa in the Western sense - large buildings with several floors of shops selling different brands, as well as cafes, cinemas, and service points. In the city center, there is the Галерея Афіна or Athena Gallery, and near the Pryvoz, the Новий Привоз or New Pryvoz, which is half-empty and rather sad - the biggest attraction here being the canteen on the top floor, where one can get perfectly Soviet-era-smelling and -tasting food for Soviet-era prices. Highly recommended!
By contrast, there are all sorts of well-known and upmarket brand stores all around downtown. There are never many shoppers, and if one just needs to buy a pair of jeans it’s probably better to go to Pryvoz anyhow, but someone in the mood for a particular brand of clothes, footwear, lingerie, handbags, glasses or whatever, can find it. There’s no shortage. However, the shopping experience is more traditional and often more pleasant - there is either a separate shop for a particular thing, or one goes to the market to buy a fashionable gentleman’s handbag and watch that looks like an Omega but isn’t necessarily one, along with a kilo of potatoes and a skinned rabbit.
But these are probably the markets that first come to mind for both newcomers and locals alike when discussing shopping in Odes. Odesa is, after all, a city of markets, with the venerable Pryvoz standing out as the mother of them all. Established in 1827, Pryvoz sits on the same site where a market for mainly imported goods, known as привозные товары in Russian, once stood, hence its name.
Today, Pryvoz is the second-largest market in the city by area. The largest market in Odesa is the Seventh Kilometer Market (Ринок ‘Сьомий кілометр’), established in the 1960s located behind the airport. Despite its size, I’ve never visited the Seventh Kilometer, though it is reputedly one of the largest markets in all of southern Europe.
While the Seventh Kilometer Market may have surpassed Pryvoz in size, it is still Pryvoz that holds the title as the city’s most important market. Situated on the edge of Odesa’s city center, near the bus and railway stations, Pryvoz is not only a landmark in its own right but also where ordinary Odesites do their daily shopping.
One can buy pretty much everything from Pryvoz. My own numerous purchases include a decent pair of leather gloves, some horrible looking but very cheap sweatpants, a gray cotton sweater, but also a fantastic piece of lamb ribs that I baked on New Year’s Eve, some amazing pomegranates, couple of hot sausage rolls and a chunky shaurma from a nearby stall.
Pryvoz also sells footwear, underwear, fishing and hunting supplies, everything you need for beekeeping, frozen fish, both Middle Eastern and Ukrainian bread, freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, home-made wine, pickled radishes, fresh and dried spices, mushrooms of all kinds (be careful with them - last autumn there were two cases of mushroom poisoning with pickled mushrooms from Pryvoz, one case was fatal), a huge range of butter, cheese, milk, yogurt, sour cream ryazhanka, ayran and so on. And, of course, Pryvoz is also surrounded by jewelry shops, watch- and shoemaker’s, small notary offices, pawnshops, and countless fast-food kiosks where one can sit down or stand up and fill the belly for a reasonable price. One Uzbek stall is allegedly particularly good.
Although it is possible to buy everything from Pryvoz, it is precisely in terms of food choice that there is no equal to the market in Odesa and probably not in the whole of southern Ukraine, Moldova and north-eastern Romania. The meat hall alone is a market of a smaller scale, offering everything from a simple corn-fed chick to a lamb cutlet cut to the buyer’s specifications, as well as plenty of pork, beef, rabbit, duck, goose and turkey. Of course, there are also halal meat counters to satisfy the needs of fellow Muslims.
Fruit, vegetable vendors, and fishmongers have a roof-covered area at least the size of a football pitch. Depending on the season, the day of the week, and the time of day, there are more or fewer vendors and shoppers, but again: all needs are met. Not only are root vegetables grown in the rich local soil sold, but also all kinds of exotic fruits, their seeds, juice or preserves.
The selection of fish and seafood is awe-inspiring. Of course, the fish and molluscs from the Black Sea, the Danube and nearby rivers can be found fresh here, but the selection of seafood from more distant rivers, lakes and seas is also respectable.
And then the clothes. They’re available both in small, tightly packed booths as well as in larger, store-sized halls. Something to suit all tastes and price ranges, although... Yes - it’s more in the cheaper price range. But for those who aren’t too picky and need, for example, some nice home clothes where function is more important than form: why not.
In addition to Pryvoz, there are two other markets in the city center - New Market (Новий базар) and Old Horse Market (Старокінний ринок). While Pryvoz is south of the city center, the New Market is north-west and the Old Horse Market is east. Beyond the city center, there are many other markets, both large and small, in every district, in addition to the aforementioned Seventh Kilometer.
Both the New Market and the Old Horse Market are also moderately large. The Old Horse Market is even quite large, as it has its own niches or specialties - namely, the construction market that covers about half of the market’s area, and the pet market immediately adjacent to it. Anyone who wants to buy a big, furry spider or a small, furry dog - that’s the spot. Caution is advised here, however, as there are reportedly cases where, instead of an expensive Sphynx cat, the buyer has received a shaved kitten whose fur grew back a few weeks later...
In other words: this animal market certainly does not meet EU requirements, although there is nothing really terrible about it. It just begs the question of where these hundreds and hundreds of puppies and kittens are coming from. From some kind of sad puppy farm in an apartment block, one fears.
The Moldavanka flea market is an institution in its own right. This is a weekend street market in the district Moldavanka, near the city center, whose commercial function is a little dubious, but what it lacks in the hard business sense, it more than makes up for in filling an important social role, representing for many of its participants a quintessence of the Odesa lifestyle.
The overall picture of the flea market is that the streets are lined with tables or simply bed sheets with goods placed on them. If the word ‘goods’ can be used, as the exchange and use value of many of the items for sale make one scratch one’s head.
Here, it is possible to find worn-looking dolls from the Soviet era, eye-wateringly horrible shoes from the 60s, rusty door locks, worn-out screws, huge quantities of old books, ancient records, Belarus-made crystal, dildos of a second-hand nature and appearance, nylon sweatpants from the 90s, homemade pickles, fresh pies, handmade silver jewelry, antediluvian hand watches, ugly tableware that hasn’t been unboxed since Stalin’s time, a wide range of equally ugly lingerie, instant coffee, BB guns, furniture, endless amounts of old and worn tableware, tools - mostly second-hand - and even large photos of cottages or cars with ‘For Sale’ written on them.
The street market in Moldavanka kind of sells just about everything, but all the stuff I, at least, will never need, and although I’ve been there several times now, I’ve never had a real temptation to buy anything. Even the porcelain Mickey Mouse remained untouched after some hesitation, although I'm sure the 100-hryvnia (2.30 euros) price could have been bargained down...
Yet the question might arise, if the markets in Odesa are so impressive, why the shops and supermarkets at all. Well, for several reasons. Firstly, there are dozens of grocery stores downtown alone. Competition in the retail sector seems to be really fierce in Ukraine, and in all the major cities you can see both large nationwide chains like Silpo or ATB, and regional ones - Tavria V - or even local ones, like the Russian-named Odesa chain ‘Два Шага’ or ‘Two Steps’ - crowding in close to each other.
For the regular consumer, competition is of course a good thing: it drives down prices and forces shops to be more inventive. Almost all Ukrainian grocery chains, for example, offer freshly in-house bakes bread. The exact selection depends on the shop - in ‘Два Шага’, for example, they have good old-fashioned rectangular form white bread while Silpo has a decent selection of handmade breads in gargantuan sizes, which the shop assistant cuts by weight, in addition to wholemeal, multigrain and wheat baguettes.
Of course, fresh bakery bread is more expensive than sliced and wrapped bread, but the quality is also vastly superior.
As a general rule, local goods are cheaper than imported ones. In Ukraine, for example, it is possible also to get rye cripsbread made in Finland and Sweden, but the prices are also Scandinavian. With this in mind, it is not a bad idea to try a variety of local crispbreads with the generic name хлібці (singular хлібець), which are quite interesting, often containing or even made of pressed sunflower seeds or dried fruit.
Despite the abundance of goods in the shops, I never cease to be amazed at how bad, or rather odd, the spice selection even in the better larger supermarkets is. Most of the time, the spice shelves are filled with all sorts of satanic ready-made mixtures such as potato spice, fish spice or something similar. Selection of pure spices, however, is not fantastic. It is only when I found myself in a larger-than-life Auchan supermarket in Lviv that I am confronted with a shelf of spices, where I can find anything I like. However, as I said before, the markets are there to help, and even the most exotic spices can be found there.
Alongside the shops and markets, there is another simple way, widely loved by Ukrainians, to conveniently buy what one might not find in every shop. I am of course talking about online shopping.
While several of the biggest online stores also have their own physical outlets, the largest of them, Rozetka, is more than just an e-store. It’s an institution of sorts, with some of its outlets also functioning as regular shops. In addition, Rozetka acts as an intermediary, offering not only goods from Ukrainian producers and shops but also foreign products.
Delivery times are short and the whole procedure convenient. So it is not necessary to order the goods to Rozetka’s own delivery point, but it is also possible to choose a post office or parcel locker. In most cases there is no extra charge. Only ordering goods directly to home is more expensive. Additionally, all major grocery stores now offer home delivery services, and above a certain sum the service costs nothing.
Although prices in Ukraine are very reasonable for foreigners - but not for locals - there is one product group that is expensive in Ukraine, not only in relative terms but also in absolute terms. This is consumer electronics. As mentioned earlier: imported goods are generally more expensive than local products. And this is particularly true of electronics. Mobile phone prices tend to be a quarter or a third more expensive than in the European Union in general. The same is true of irons, laptop and desktop computers, televisions and anything else that runs on electricity. Whether the high prices are due to the war, I am afraid I cannot say.
But on the subject of the war: prices are prices, yet everything is available, and if there are some products that I personally feel are lacking (I mentioned spices earlier, and I also haven’t found frozen meatballs), it’s not because of a lack of supply, but because of cultural differences.
There are only a few shopping malls in Odesa in the Western sense - large buildings with several floors of shops selling different brands, as well as cafes, cinemas, and service points. In the city center, there is the Галерея Афіна or Athena Gallery, and near the Pryvoz, the Новий Привоз or New Pryvoz, which is half-empty and rather sad - the biggest attraction here being the canteen on the top floor, where one can get perfectly Soviet-era-smelling and -tasting food for Soviet-era prices. Highly recommended!
By contrast, there are all sorts of well-known and upmarket brand stores all around downtown. There are never many shoppers, and if one just needs to buy a pair of jeans it’s probably better to go to Pryvoz anyhow, but someone in the mood for a particular brand of clothes, footwear, lingerie, handbags, glasses or whatever, can find it. There’s no shortage. However, the shopping experience is more traditional and often more pleasant - there is either a separate shop for a particular thing, or one goes to the market to buy a fashionable gentleman’s handbag and watch that looks like an Omega but isn’t necessarily one, along with a kilo of potatoes and a skinned rabbit.
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