I love going to the palengke! Growing up, I would accompany my Mom to the wet market on weekends, and I’d get so excited looking for fresh seafood or picking out the best fruits and veggies. I still get that same high today, and I always make it a point to go to the market of every destination I visit. Here’s something I wrote for Yummy!  

If I had all the time in the world, I would go to the palengke every single day like my Lola Saleng used to. At the first light of day, off she’d go with her itty-bitty purse and big, roomy bayong. Because I was too young to accompany her then, all I knew of her daily jaunts were the treasures she’d eventually lay out the table: a variety of fish and seafood like bangus, alumahan, and hipon, green, leafy vegetables like they were just picked from someone’s garden, a bunch of my favorite kamatis, as well as some sapin-sapin and sumang malagkit. I thought then that the palengke must be some magical, mystical place. It was only when I grew up that I found out how much of a haven it truly is, especially for chefs and home cooks who want to make magic in every single pot.

For many, the palengke is a labyrinthian sort of place, filled with men hauling crates and vendors shouting out their specials, to say nothing of the wet, slippery floors! But these elements only add to its charm as opposed to the sometimes overly commercialized vibe of the supermarket.

Shopping at the palengke offers a number of benefits and a couple of perks too. You get the freshest items for one. Chef Jajie Maullon, owner and managing chef of catering company Golden Palate Asia, says, “Talk about fresh produce, they have it all here. If you are a salad fanatic, you could buy fresh lettuce of all kinds, be it lollo rosso, romaine, iceberg, and even the hard to find arugula! For fish and seafoods, it is very convenient to buy in a palengke because you are guaranteed of a fresh catch daily.”

More than having them fresh, you also get to pick exactly the item you want. There are no cling wraps or any sort of packaging between you and the food. You can press them, smell them, and even poke them a bit, purchasing only the item that passed your standards.

Chef Joseph Salvosa, restaurateur behind JoChef’s in Tiendesitas, adds, “Another reason to go over the palengke is to get personal with your ingredients. I go there sometimes asking, ‘Saan po galing ‘yan?’ ‘Matamis ba?’”

Plus, and this is a big one, it is cheaper to buy your veggies, meat, and seafood at the palengke as opposed to getting them in the supermarket, and you even have the opportunity to get a substantial discount if you know the art of negotiation. Enid Francis C. Viaña, mompreneur behind catering company Viana’s Kitchen, says, “In the market, you can still haggle despite their having cheaper prices. For example, if I buy a kilo of medium-sized shrimps in the grocery, that would cost from P485 to P765. In the market, that kilo of shrimps would cost less than P300.

There are other pluses too. If you get a big bunch of veggies, for instance, your tindera would readily give you a handful of siling pansigang or an extra potato. If you want your bangus deboned, your fishmonger would do so at no extra cost.

There are many food items to see, smell, and taste at the palengke. Sabrina Go, the woman behind the recipe blog, Sinfully Sabrina, says, “I buy most of my seafood in the palengke for their freshness. Local fruits and veggies in season are what I scout for in my palengke trips as well. I’m always on the lookout for what’s new and not typically found. I like to challenge myself with dishes I haven’t cooked before. Also, I go for nostalgia. When I was a kid it was always easy to find local fruits like guava, sineguelas, and duhat, now not so much anymore. So when I do find them, I make sure to grab a bunch.”

Chef Jajie chimes in. “Asparagus, dill, lemon, and fennel are now available in the palengke. When we started our Paella Valenciana delivery, fresh asparagus and parsley were hard to find. We had to go to three different supermarkets to source them. But now, it is readily available any time of the day.”

“The palengke is best for when searching for local ingredients for traditional meals,” says Chef Joseph. “For real nutty peanut butter for kare-kare sans the sugar and preservatives, you can have freshly ground peanuts. Or say you need ground malagkit for sampelot (ginataang halo-halo), chances are they have it there maybe even shaped into balls already.”

While the palengke’s seafood section is wildly exciting with such offerings as tuna, blue marlin, lapu-lapu, crabs, talaba, tulya, and seaweed, its dry goods section is just as interesting. You can find all sorts of nuts, beans, rice (yes, from white and brown to red), and dried seafood there alongside sago, gulaman, and pinipig.

There is a rhyme and reason for how to traverse a palengke’s many corridors. If you are visiting a palengke that’s entirely new to you, it’s best to get a feel of the place first. Scout the area, taking note of the location of the produce, meat, chicken, seafood, and dry goods sections.

Chef Joseph says, “The plan of attack is go to the dry goods section first. Think pantry items like rice, atsuete, paminta, and things that don’t go bad easily.”

A trip to the vegetable section is up next, hopping over to the fruit section thereafter.

Chef Jajie says, “Immediately after that, we go to the meat and fish section. This is to ensure that our meat and fish won’t get spoiled even before we arrive home.”

Okay, going to the palengke may sound like some sort of workout. But hey, it’s a fun workout! If you’ve spent all your life shopping at the supermarket, a trip to the palengke is definitely a must-try. Chef Joseph says, “Get out of your comfort zone. Chances are, if you wear tsinelas, you’ll get your feet dirty or if you wear shoes, you might get spills but that’s okay. Palengke trips can be fun and gastronomically enlightening.”

Enid goes to the palengke because it brings to her many pleasant memories. She shares, “There was a time when I would go to the market with my grandmother and she would stay and talk and exchange life stories with her suki. We would normally leave early and go back home close to lunch time because of her suki. But before that, she would bring me to the carinderia, and there she would buy me spaghetti or halo-halo. This was a great source of motivation for me to wake up early and go with my grandma to the smelly palengke.”

“I go to markets with a blank canvas so to speak,” Sabrina says. “I let the fresh and seasonal produce inspire me and more often than not, I come out with organic goods that make up two to three dishes that I cook within the weekend. It’s like a game I play alone and the outcome is as much a surprise to my family as it is to me.”