by Mike Aquino for Yahoo! Southeast Asia
My wife likes to do our household shopping on Sundays. Sunday mornings are the best time to hit the markets, she says, when the items have just arrived from the farms, "bagong bagsak" as she likes to say.
Plenty of other kumanders think the same way; Sunday is a big market day for many other families in Metro Manila, and plenty of weekend markets have sprouted to meet the demand.
The weekend market is a fixture of cities all around the world. In Bangkok, Thailand, the gigantic Chatuchak Weekend Market's 15,000 shops serve about 200,000 visitors each day. In the west, weekend markets in major cities have become the best way for organic farmers to get their produce directly into the city dwellers' hands.
The motivation and the market are much the same in Manila: small farmers and "artisanal" producers use weekend markets to sell directly to customers without the big supermarkets' intervention. One of the first weekend markets to hit it big in Manila was the Sidcor Sunday Market in central Quezon City. First opened in 2000, Sidcor soon became a byword for fresh organic produce.
The concept soon gained popularity in the rest of the city, and today weekend shoppers can count on having a weekend market somewhere close, wherever they may be.
In Makati, the weekend market operates in two different places from Saturday to Sunday: at Salcedo Village on Saturdays, and at Legazpi Village on Sundays. In Fort Bonifacio, Mercato Centrale (and Midnight Mercato) serve weekend shoppers and late-night foodies alike. And to the far south, the Soderno @ Molito Lifestyle Center opens on November 18, giving Alabang-based shoppers a weekend market of their own.
Every weekend market is different. Sidcor's huge floor area holds a large number of stalls selling everything from garden supplies to regional delicacies to organic produce to fresh meat. The Legazpi Sunday Market, in comparison, is small and quite neighborly. Here, the stall owners are quite happy to make conversation about the freshness of their artisanal bagoong. Legazpi is as leisurely as Sidcor is hot, heavy, and packed.
Every market offers a different take on the Philippines' regional dishes. My wife is partial to Sidcor's lechon kawali, while I'm addicted to the Legazpi Sunday Market's "Bud-Bud Kabog", a specialty suman made from millet, and manufactured in different flavors. Diners who want a whole spread of organic cuisine can try Mercato Centrale's all-organic brunch buffet — P150 lets you fill your plate (and your belly) with organic salads, Kalinga-grown brown rice, and chicken lollipops made from free-range chicken, among other delicacies.
Moms searching for fresh produce will find farm-fresh vegetables, fruits, and meats in any weekend market. These are mostly grown to organic standards (although only the farmer knows for sure). Because of each farms' relatively small production output, prices on these organic goods tend to be higher, almost double of their counterparts in the supermarkets.
But high prices aren't the norm in weekend markets; I've found plenty of inexpensive surprises in weekend market stalls selling huge slabs of bagnet, exotic fruits, and delicious homemade kakanin.
The weekend market isn't just good for farmers seeking a more direct way to sell to city folk like us; it's good for city folk like us who want great value on foods we won't find anywhere else, or on any other day of the week.
List of Metro Manila Weekend Markets
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