Market Manila

Screech to a halt! Turn the car around! I spotted a bibingka (puto, to non-Cebuanos) vendor streetside putting in a new batch of bibingka/puto in molds into her large makeshift wood fired steamer! Folks who ride with me in a car these days do so at their own peril, as I am notorious for stopping/photographing/buying food or produce. I had passed this particular area on Veterans Drive in Lahug (near the small street market) HUNDREDS of times in the past 5 years as it leads up to where I stay when I am in Cebu… but I have never noticed this puto seller before… It always amazes me what you find when you simply open your eyes.

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Sunday seems like the perfect day to do a post on the Capitol Site Eatery, also known as Marjo’s to some, or the Bulalo/Puchero place near the Capitolyo, on Villalon Drive Street (yes, it is somehow a Drive and a Street at the same time?!), a stone’s throw from the Cebu Capitol at the end of Osmena Boulevard (previously Jones Avenue). This turo-turo or carinderia has been open for the last 35+ years, serving just a few dishes, with beef bulalo cebu style being it’s trademark specialty. My wife’s family used to send large calderos to this place and they would fill it up with soup and meat and it would be re-heated at home and served in fancier digs. I have never eaten here before, but have heard about it dozens of times. So on my last trip to Cebu, I decided to take the office crew out to lunch and check out the Capitol Site Eatery… We sent someone ahead to secure a large table for our party and we arrived at 11:30 am to avoid any lunch time rush. The place itself is best described as old, tired, grungy and certain of its ugliness. Do they care at all? Not. In your face “it’s not about the interiors, dodo, it’s the about the soup.” Presided over by the owner, Manang at the counter, is a tad loopy but in an entertaining sort of way, and fear not, the soup is utterly worth the visit…

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I only had 10 minutes to run through one or two stories of a cramped and almost claustrophoic Laoag city market. It wasn’t even clear if this was the main market, but it was a relatively large one near the center of town, also on Rizal Street, I think. I managed to hurry through one of the most amazing dried fish and shrimp sections I have ever seen, smaller than the Tabuan dried fish market in Cebu, but the variety of goods on offer in Vigan was nevertheless quite impressive. I would have loved to stop and chat and ask vendors precisely what several of the bilaos or sacks contained, but the self-imposed timer was ticking. Besides, I couldn’t buy any of the dried fish or other goods as we were still heading up to the Northernmost tip of Luzon, rather than sprinting back home to Manila.

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Calle Crisologo is one of the main tourist attractions in the city of Vigan. A fairly well-preserved cobblestone street, a few hundred meters in length, and lined with many old buildings (that are intact, restored or in disrepair), it certainly takes one back a century or more to Vigan at its peak. It was interesting to see the names on several of the old buildings, as they obviously referred to the families that owned them or lived in them at some point. I didn’t realize the Syquia’s had a base in Vigan, for example. Or there were several other prominent names in mortar. Calle Crisologo is now lined with handicraft and curio shops and some furniture and antiques dealers. We purchased a few touristy items here and there and even browsed through several of the antiques shops. Much of the furniture on offer is new, and some that are passed off as real antiques are sometimes a bit questionable, at best. However, there WERE finds. And while early in the trip, Mrs. MM and I managed to acquire several pieces at unbelievably reasonable prices. What clinched the deal was promised delivery to our home in Manila for free within two weeks from the time of purchase!

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An early morning tricycle ride landed us at the steps of The Vigan Public Market at about 6:30a.m. Believe it or not, we were a BIT early, though the second floor where the produce and seafood were was slowly waking up… after another 30 minutes, more and more vendors were open, and the selection was simply wonderful and incredibly FRESH. As with all provincial markets, what you see is what you generally eat in the restaurants or homes of the region… the linkage is a very real one and so I enjoy hitting the markets in almost all of the towns and cities that I visit in an effort to understand the raw materials are the key starting point for any fantastic dish…

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Okay, let’s start with the humor. Get a grip folks, this is not a flattering name for a dessert, no matter how you look at it. For me, it evokes the upper arm of an older mother or aunt where the skin is kinda soft and pulpy and clearly has never seen the inside of a gym. If the arms are held high to clap, the skin hanging below the bone flaps, and if really bad, could act as small sails in a strong wind. Hello, how unappetizing a vision is that? :) And why is this gender specific? Couldn’t this just as amusingly be named Hita ni Ramon, Procopio or Sebastian? Just make the roll bigger. Hahaha. As a kid, I disliked Brazo de Mercedes with a passion. I distinctly recall eating a badly made one where the eggwhitey outer layer smelled and tasted seriously eggy, and like a bad egg at that. Then there was the oozy rich yema-ish filling. Uugghh. But my mom loved this dessert and could easily eat a whole one (have you noticed how bloody long Mercedes’ brazo must have been?) in a day, if left to her own devices. She was friends with a Spanish lady (whose name I don’t recall, but it wasn’t Mercedes, Volkswagen or Jaguar), who owned a nearby bakery, and that is where she got her brazo. I forgot about this dessert for a good 30 years until I started this blog, at which point readers have repeatedly hounded me for a version. Well, let me cut speculation right here…I don’t think I will ever bake one, but now I will certainly order one from one of several terrific sources in town…

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I was at the OTOP (One Town, Own Product) Luzon Fair yesterday, minutes after it opened and scoured the aisles for interesting food items. It is on-going until August 12, 2007. I love these types of fairs and I always try to get there before they run out of goodies. I am so bummed that I missed the huge food trade fair last week at the World Trade Center, I was still in Cebu… but this one at Megamall had some interesting finds… I was most excited about two dried fruit finds… first up top, Candied tomatoes from Nueva Ecija and Kasoy (Cashew) Fruit Prunes from Palawan. The Candied tomatoes were at the stall of Kababaihan Masigla ng Nueva Ecija, a cooperative of farmers’ wives who wanted to make use of abundant produce at their peak. I also bought a very interesting tomato jelly from this booth. The candied tomatoes were PHP80 for a small plastic container and the bottled tomato jelly was PHP45.

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I am in Cebu at the moment, and very busy, hence the relative quiet on the blog, and thus the need to do posts where you can all amuse each other with your fantastic answers to the question of “what you do for a living? I am utterly amazed by the variety of things everyone is involved in… it’s really fantastic! But I did want to do a post on a recent visit to the Carbon Market in Cebu, which is the mother of all produce markets on the island. Similar to Divisoria in Manila, The Carbon is where a lot of produce on the island of Cebu changes hands… When I announced at the small family office that I wanted to hit the Carbon that afternoon, everyone looked at each other like, “is he out of his mind?” A few years ago I went to the Carbon at about 10pm (near the peak of the market) and it was WALL TO WALL PEOPLE and produce and frankly, at one point it did seem a bit unsafe to be waltzing around, an obvious tourist. The Carbon seems to have more “interesting characters” than other markets I have spent time in. Located at the end of the Cebu railway line (yes, there used to be a railway), the area was used to store coal in the days when it powered steam engines that in turn generated power for the city. With all the huge mountains of coal stores, it became known as The Carbon…

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