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The City That Starts at Nine

Some places do not really open until the office lights go off. A guide to eating, walking and getting home in cities that keep their own hours.

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There is a category of city where arriving in the afternoon feels like a mistake. The streets are hot and half shuttered, the famous market is a row of tarpaulins, and you begin to wonder what everyone sees in the place. Then the light goes and the whole thing reassembles itself in about forty minutes.

Eat in the order the street does

The grills come out first, around six, because charcoal takes a while. Noodles follow. The dessert carts appear last and stay latest, long after everything else has packed down. Eating in that order costs nothing and means you get each thing at the hour it was made for, rather than at the hour your schedule suggested.

A practical note: the stalls that set up latest are usually the ones with the shortest menu, and the shortest menu is almost always the best bet. One dish done four hundred times a night beats twelve done occasionally.

Getting back

Agree the fare before getting in, or use the app everyone local uses rather than the one you already have. Screenshot your accommodation's address in the local script — pronunciation will fail you at one in the morning and a picture will not. And walk the last few streets if you can; the way home is when a city is quietest and most itself.

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Comments (3)

  • Tom Okafor

    Madrid is the advanced course in this. Dinner at ten, and the street is busier at midnight than it was at six.

  • Priya Raghavan

    The getting-home section is the part every other guide leaves out, which is strange, because it is the part that decides whether you go out at all.

  • Owen Doyle

    Add Beirut to the list. Nothing happens before nine and then everything happens at once.