Don’t get me wrong. I love El Mercado. It’s a couple blocks from my house. It’s part grocery store, part food court.
But stop calling it a hidden gem. It is not hidden. Hidden is something down a dark alley or not visible from the sidewalk.
Look at this sign! Large. Colorful. Descriptive.
When people call it “hidden,” what I hear is that they do not spend any time on Park Street, which is one of the city’s main commercial corridors.
Let’s figure out how to give props to excellent neighborhood businesses without calling everything outside of the Central Business District “hidden.”
Pablo
“Hidden.” Yeah. Or “exotic.” A place for “authentic” foreign food. All of that reeks of the self-centered liberal white privilege that dominates this country.
Johnna
Ugh. I try not to use “hidden gem” at all, just because it’s on my list of travel writing cliches. (I admit to using gem sometimes, though I don’t love that either.) But it’s interesting to think about how avoiding lazy writing can also prevent this kind of (unintentional?) racism and general ickiness.
Linda Pagani
It’s unknown only to those who never venture beyond the central business district. But hidden, it is not.
Linda Pagani
Which was your original thesis.