Market Manila

Now this is FRESH. In stark contrast to the fish in the previous post from The Pasil Market, all you have to do is take a look at these photos to realize the quality of seafood at the Bogo market was far superior to the large wholesale market in downtown Cebu. Bogo is a fairly large town near the Northern tip of Cebu, near good fishing grounds, and with a medium sized market. We scheduled our trip to depart from Cebu City at 5 a.m., precisely in order to reach the Bogo Market at around 7a.m., on a Thursday, one of two tabo or major market days each week. There wasn’t as much volume or variety of fish/seafood at the market when compared to bigger city markets, but the quality was so darned good that if I had an LPG tank, burner and pan, I would have been cooking up a storm for breakfast. We were still on our way to Malapascua, so we didn’t buy any perishables, but I could have easily filled a cooler at this market… And for some strange reason, despite many of the fish here being similar to those photographed at Pasil, I got the feeling there was a lot more dignity for the produce here. They would end up in people’s stomachs all the same, but here it was more genteel, more human, less ruthless… does that make any sense?

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The alarm clock was set for the ungodly hour of 2:00 a.m., and it blared for several seconds before it was silenced! Even for Marketman, an early riser, waking at this hour was painful. Did I really want to see the Pasil Fish Market in downtown Cebu, apparently the largest seafood market in the Visayas, that badly? Well, yes actually, I did. And I have wanted to see it for many years. A suitable guide, the father of one of my office colleagues in Cebu, who was a regular shopper and re-seller of fish from Pasil, would be waiting for me in a van, ready to head to the market in just 10 minutes. The office crew were somewhat mortified that I wanted to visit this market at its peak trading hour around 2 a.m., instead of a much less active version during the day. The crew expressed concerns about the seedy neighborhood, the various questionable “characters” hanging around the place, the sanitary conditions, etc. I had survived a trip to the Carbon Market at midnight several years ago, but I had to admit I was a bit apprehensive during that visit, so I wasn’t taking their concerns for granted. Instead, we agreed to hit the market with the guide and 3 guys tagged along to see the sights as well, a couple of them Marketman certified fish buyers… I was happy to have the company, and I would not have felt comfortable there by myself, taking flash photographs, particularly when it came to some of the more exotic, if not contraband fish. I do not recommend an obvious neophyte traipsing through the Pasil market in the wee hours of the morning… Having said that, nothing even remotely untoward occurred in the 45 minutes I spent at the market, though I was clearly a fish out of water and the hundreds of regulars there knew that…

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A good sign of a successful rally is the variety of street food, snacks and drinks on offer. I kid you not. If there are thousands and thousands of people, committed to staying a couple of hours or more in one place, true to pinoy form, they are going to do some serious munching regardless of the gravity or seriousness of the event. Rather than doing my own crowd estimate, which would be far less absurd than the official police estimate of 15,000 people (what were they smoking?), I will bravely estimate that roughly 15,000,000 calories were consumed at that rally in the span of about 4 hours! Here are just some of the photos of the food/snacks on offer at yesterday’s rally. And bravo to the event organizers for providing a venue for people to voice their outrage at the recent goings on…

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Tabagwang or small snails collected from rice fields were on offer by one vendor at the Legazpi market. I understand these are enjoyed in the same manner as kuhol, but I have personally never tried these.

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There is something so wonderful about the color green, particularly when experienced at a provincial market with farm fresh produce. The color green can be soothing and invigorating at the same time. In this post, I feature photos of several “greens” - leafy vegetables both familiar and not, as well as other veggies colored green. Up top, a huge pile of betel leaves, buyo to locals, overturned, and waiting for buyers. I know betel leaves are used as part of a Thai dish (a wrapper for herbs, dried shrimps, lime and sometimes sour fruit like green mango), but locally I think it’s main use is to wrap betel fruit for the traditionalists to chew on and get their nicotine fix…

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Members of my office crew, legal team, and I spent a good hour in the Legazpi market last week, in the midst of a mild weather disturbance raging outdoors. Despite the bad weather, we were surprised to find incredible offerings in the seafood and vegetable sections and I will do a few posts on our finds. The first thing that caught my eye in the seafood section was a tray with these ENORMOUS squid heads and tentacles. The massive body lay nearby on the tile counter, but it was the heads that I wanted to photograph… stunning!

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I totally love the idea. A Gourmet Sari-Sari Store. And the proprietor is frequent commenter Artisan Chocolatier from Cebu, the man that baked the madelienes I featured here. His idea was to put together a small retail food store that would eventually feature some of the best locally produced food items, in addition to all the regular things you might expect to find in a convenience store. Artisan had told me about this concept a few months ago, and even asked if he could “borrow” the word “Suki” as the name (of course I said yes, I certainly didn’t have the rights to it), then in a recent comment on this blog mentioned his store was now open. So last week, when I was in Cebu, I decided to drop by unannounced to check it out. The store is on Veterans Drive, directly across from the old Casino Filipino building just a bit further up than the Marco Polo Plaza Hotel. It’s on the way to Busay… It had only been open a couple of weeks when I got there and stocks were a bit slim, but in addition to the regular sari-sari store items, I was pleased to find fresh milk from a local cebuano dairy cooperative, several types of baked goods like wheat pan de sal, cookies, etc. made in their own kitchens (at a separate location), etc.

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I was walking down the main street of Culion and spotted this interesting “general” store near the heart of town. From the outside it looked like most typical sari-sari stores, except that it seemed to have a lot more goods in stock. But out of the corner of my eye I noticed the shelves so I decided to have a peek inside the store. On closer inspection, I was stunned to see the narra cabinets, a real throwback to the 1950’s or 1960’s, all with glass fronts to prevent dust from the dirt roads then from settling on the goods in stock…

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