This July 5, 2015, Legazpi Sunday Market (LSM) celebrates ten years of being the go-to outdoor weekend market in Makati for a vibrant experience of food and shopping in a welcoming neighborhood setting.
Legazpi Sunday Market's Beginnings
The Legazpi Sunday Market, for the unfamiliar, operates as an outdoor tiangge or flea market every Sunday at the Legazpi Car Park in Legazpi Village. The market saw its early beginnings as a market in Greenbelt 1, which was called Mara’s Organic Market (MOM), operated by Mara Pardo de Tavera and her friends. This later on transferred to the car park behind the Corinthian Tower Building along Paseo de Roxas, and on June 12, 2005, Barangay San Lorenzo began to operate a Sunday market at the Legazpi Car Park, which was then named Legazpi Sunday Market.
Legazpi Sunday Market: Fast Facts
1. Legazpi Sunday Market started with about 40 vendors in 2005, and now it has grown to about 180 vendors.
2. The market showcases a variety of products: food makes up majority of the offerings at 70%; LSM also sells assorted handicrafts, clothes and accessories, and fresh produce.
3. Let your tastebuds travel around the Philippines, and across the world: the market features regional cuisine (such as Tagalog, Capampangan, Visayan), Asian fare (Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Indian) to American, Spanish and Middle Eastern cuisine.
4. What keeps patrons going back to LSM, and the list of hopeful merchants wanting space there run long, is its uniqueness: not only are the offerings diverse, but the products being sold are not your run of the mill 'mainstream' offerings — these goods are not available in major malls, and there is hardly any duplication in the products being sold.
5. "Eat, Shop, and Mingle" is their tagline, and for ten years Legazpi Sunday Market has been a market where you can easily bump into friends, celebrities, personalities, expats, and tourists alike — it has become become a tourist and foodie destination for both the local and international market.
To make it into Legazpi Sunday Market's impressive merchant lineup is gold. They always have a long list of applicants wanting to sell their food and goods in Legazpi Sunday Market, because of its winning formula of offering a welcoming space to eat, shop, and mingle–the atmosphere is always friendly, and it's simply a community market that is open to everyone. Likewise, as a market-goer, we are all encouraged to enter this Sunday market open–open to meeting new people, open to eating new food and buying our favorites, and open to trying new products.
LSM's 10th Anniversary Festivities
To celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, LSM's lineup of festivities will have 4 parts: the unveiling of their new logo this Sunday, July 5, two cooking competitions (Adobolympics in August and Grilla in Manila in September), and an awards night which is targeted to happen in October. Morning activities for July 5th will be a parade by Don Bosco drum and lyre band (8:30am and 10:00am), Sunday Mass (9:00am), and unveiling of new logo (10:30am). The new logo will also be placed on the stalls of the pioneer vendors — merchants who have been in LSM since 2005 — in recognition.
To experience the best of Legazpi Sunday Market is to schedule multiple visits–there's really so much to see, eat, meet, and buy that one Sunday is not enough. Your belly space is limited too, so it's best to come often and come hungry. The food choices do overwhelm, and each person you've asked about the market probably has their own favorite stall to recommend, making it even hard to shortlist what to eat for brunch or lunch.
To help you a little bit, we go back in 2005–during the beginnings of the Sunday Market that was to become the "it" place in Makati to hang out for good eats, great buys, and friendly company. Here are three of their pioneer, long-time merchants you should check out for unique eats that up until now, are market favorites.
3 Legazpi Pioneer Food Vendors You Should Check Out:
1. Budbud Gourmet Suman
FB: "Budbud – Gourmet Suman" | 0929-3661999, 807-2004 | IG: @budbudgourmetsuman | budbudgourmetsuman@gmail.com
Quality product, passion, and an eagerness to please — this is the winning combination, shares Carl Van Hoven of Budbud Gourmet Suman. His wife Maribel began her delicious journey into budbud (suman) when she found herself wanting to recreate it as a more elevated delicacy, using quality ingredients (premium 'sungsung' rice) and always served fresh. She is self taught on the art of budbud, and had their first customers enjoy suman in different forms and flavors at their first "store" located at the basketball court in their village. Today, they are already exporting their famous budbud and always run out of their popular flavors before hitting lunch time at the Sunday market — proving they have shifted the suman appreciation from slapdash palengke food to delicious gourmet snacks.
Specialty: Budbud Kabog (P35/piece) — budbud using millet cooked with coconut milk and sugar instead of glutinous rice. While suman is the star in this market stall, don't miss out on their native Hot Chocolate.
Also Try: Inventive flavor combinations of rice cake rolls, each Flavored Budbud (rice cake roll, P35/piece) sweetened with ingredients just right that you don't actually need to drown it in syrup or dip in sugar: there's Mangga, Saging, Langka, Cassava with Coco Jam, Tsokolate, Champorado, Biko, Ube-Langka, Ube-Buko, Purple Rice, Luya. Newer flavors include Buko Pandan, Ube, Tres Dulces (ube, banana, and langka), and Budbud Kabog with Cocosugar.
2. Imang Salud
www.imangsalud.com | FB: /imangsalud | 404-6582, 0920-9478819 | meliza@imangsalud.com
Imang Salud's claim to fame is introducing to the Manila palate the classic ensaimada: big, fluffy, golden yellow breads done Pampanga-style. Their ensaimadas have a very strong following that yes, they easily run out of stock just a couple of hours upon opening stall at the market–and it's at Legazpi where their products first got famous, shares Meliza Santos-Henares. "My grandmother started it before the war as a home business, then I joined the market. Here, I am always sold out," she shares. Sticking to the tried and tested family recipe has been pleasing old-timers and high society folk, proving that a classic will never run out of style.
Specialty: Kapampangan Homemade Classic Ensaimadas, which uses the heirlooom recipe of Imang Salud Dayrit-Santos of San Fernando, Pampanga, passed on to three generations in the Dayrit-Santos family. An ensaimada is 6 inches in diameter, a melt in your mouth bread generous with queso de bola that also has a long shelf life (5 days to a week in room temperature).
Also Try: Other Pampangueno delicacies like Plantanilla, Balo-Balo, Tibuk-Tibuk, assorted Atsara, and Pindang Damulag
3. Pinoy Ordurvz
FB: /pinoyorduvzfoods | 624-3454, 0917-8440563 | IG: @pinoy_ordurvz | pinoy.ordruvz@gmail.com
Pinor Ordurvz saw its beginnings at the market selling bottled sardines–the first thing that owner Carlitos Abello actually learned how to make, after receiving training under TLRC. Another item introduced early in their bottled specialty foods lineup is the milkfish pate — a random suggestion by a customer who suggested it during one market day, which eventualy became a best-seller. They currently have dozens of products, some original creations and some showcasing family sauces and recipes. Before the malunggay craze (before the teas, tablets, powders, and all the malunggay products possible), in 2006 they started selling Malunggay Pesto with basil and fresh malunggay leaves. No one was minding it until malunggay and its health benefits were heavily promoted locally, shooting up the product to be the top selling item. It's still a best seller until now, now that Moringa is declared as the Philippines' national vegetable.
Specialty: Tuyo in Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Milkfish Pate in Olive Oil, Smoed Sardines, Malunggay Pesto, Baked Beans, Healthy Bagoong, Malunggay Pesto, Bangus Belly in Olive Oil Bistek Style, Chili Con Carne. Pinoy Ordurvz always uses 100% olive oil and extra virgin olive oil, and absolutely no preservatives.
Also Try: Chili con Champignon, Lengua in Mushroom Sauce, Zero-Sugar Peanut Butter, Dulong in Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Tofu Adobo in Olive Oil
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The Legazpi Sunday Market is held every Sunday at the Legazpi Car Park located at Herrera corner Legazpi Streets in Legazpi Village, Makati. Open 7:30am to 2:00pm.
