The Philippine Daily Inquirer did a feature 
article on this website on Thursday, April 14 2005, and in the next 48 hours marketmanila.com got over 12,000 page views from over 1,200 new visitors. Thank you PDI for the nice article and resulting activity. As the newspaper hit the streets, I was on a ferry to Bohol and had no internet access for the next day and a half. Didn’t even see the paper till much later in the day! Thank goodness for cellphones as my 9 year old daughter sent near hourly texts to tell me just how many pages were being viewed. Again, many thanks to all of you who have visited – I hope you enjoyed the site and will return in the future.
But this is probably the best time to say an even bigger thank you to everyone else out there who has been so instrumental in pushing this website forward and providing encouragement and helpful advice along the way. First, a friend at asiahotels.com who kept pushing me to put up this website and went as far as buying the name and giving it to me as a present for the holidays and finding me a nice website designer who would help me bring this to fruition. Also critical are all of the early food enthusiasts and bloggers who so generously provided links to my site when it was just weeks old and who have, over the past 10 weeks, sent many new readers my way: Manang Kusinera, Kitchen ni Lola, The Pilgrim’s Pots and Pans, Baby Rambutan, Quezon.ph, For the Love of Food and Travel, and Pinoy Cook. A huge thanks to all of you. Please visit these sites as they have a wealth of recipes and great commentary on food and other things of interest.
To all those who emailed kind messages, thanks as well. I hope I can answer many of your requests over the coming months for special features on one thing or another.
To my wife and daughter, who have endured countless meal interruptions in order for me to photograph the food, a big hug and lots of kisses. To my faithful crew and assistants that trek with me to markets, spot the freshest seafood, wash my produce before I photograph it, prep my ingredients before I cook, barbecue with zeal, strip roses of their thorns, shlep my stuff and endure my mid-life nutty-ness – daghang salamat!
5 Responses
i really loved PDI especially ms. reggie aspiras cuz m also a chef by passion. thank u too for ur excellent effort to reach us… very informative & educational too
vilkommen! I should say thank you as well from your link I went to Pilgrims Pots and Pans from there I saw Oslo Foodie who helped us a lot with our transition period here in Oslo
and you deserve to be mentioned its a great web page!!!
I’ve been looking for sites like these for the longest time and I also thank PDI for the feature. I felt right at home the minute I surfed into this site.
KUDOS!
I learned of your site from the PDI…and I was so glad! I lived in Europe for a while and I loved the markets there…it’s one of the things I really miss. I am really happy that the whole “market culture” is catching on here, and more people are taking to it. I think there has been a “disconnect” between what people see on their plates and the food’s actual origins for too long. Anyway, I also love food…so there, your site is quite perfect for me :-) Congratulations on your success and keep it coming!
Thanks everyone for the encouraging comments. I am glad increasing numbers of readers are finding the site useful and enjoyable. I rely on readers like you to spread the word… please forward website address to others who might find it useful. Thanks.