About Me
Marketman is a well-traveled management consultant who loves buying, cooking and eating good food. I have been fortunate enough to eat in some terrific restaurants and shop at many spectacular markets and food stores around the globe. I enjoy cooking and entertaining at home but I have no formal training at all-my knife skills are mediocre but I do make my mayonnaise from scratch. Food is simply a personal passion.
Born in Cebu, I grew up in Metro Manila and headed way east to university in Boston and graduate school in New York. For over a dozen years I worked as a corporate banker then as a management consultant flitting from North America to Asia to Australia and occasionally even Europe and the Middle East. Now semi-retired and based back in Manila, I am most annoyed by people who lack logic and reason… but second on my list of irritants is the need to go to a dozen or so stores, markets, groceries, etc. all over Manila just to pull off a reasonably interesting dinner.
The lack of choices, stock and consistency of produce, meats and dry goods is frustrating but one learns to adjust. Over the past few years, food options in Manila have expanded dramatically and I have also ventured to less obvious sources to string together my own set of suppliers and provedores. I learn something every week and I now find that I can get almost anything I want; with some huge caveats.
The Website
Market Manila is my way of helping two groups of people: new arrivals and interested locals who, like me, had no clue where to find ingredients, what local produce existed, where to get specialty food items, etc.; and secondly, farmers, market vendors, retailers, who had the foresight to seek out the best the Philippines has to offer and take the risk of selling these to nutcases like myself. Market Manila is also my reason to overspend and overbuy every time I am in a market or food store with the excuse that it is just part of my “research budget.”
I use a French market basket (therefore my logo) when I hit the market at 6am, chop vegetables for therapy, fire up my Viking six burner with grill and double ovens, have over 200 cookbooks in my library, and have three refrigerators in my home to keep supplies.
I complain a lot about bad service and would make a pretty wicked restaurant critic if my lawyers weren’t so worried that I would get sued just to shut me up. I hope you enjoy my website. If it manages to amuse you, please pass it on to your friends – my greatest fear is that I will only have three hits a day – my wife, my daughter and myself. And my daughter has just said she wouldn’t even visit every day!
The Content
All of the writing and photography on marketmanila.com are my original literary works unless otherwise indicated. It is an infringement of my copyright if you reproduce in part or in whole any of my posts or photographs without prior written approval or mention of the source. The site is completely free of charge and encourages all of you to experience, enjoy and learn from it, but please do not abuse it by stealing photographs or the write-ups themselves. My copyright is protected under Philippine Copyright Law and the Berne Convention for the Protection of Artistic and Literary Works.
