If you’re spending Sundays at the metro and looking for an extraordinary culinary experience before going to church, there’s the Market One behind the Lung Center of the Philippines, along Quezon Avenue. (It’s probably the only weekend market in Metro Manila in which you get to sit beside Batanes representative Butch Abad at a makeshift coffee stall enjoying Cordillera coffee. The congressman is a regular at Market One, which he describes as a “cultural feast.”)

Manila residents will have a similar food feast to look forward to all Sundays of September as Alveo opens PICK Manila, a weekend market located at the entrance of Celadon Manila, a new leisure community just across SM San Lazaro. The Alveo people invited us last Sunday to sample what PICK Manila had to offer, and boy, deciding what to buy has never seemed so difficult. Armed with P500, we scoured the entire stretch of PICK Manila and came up with these interesting finds:

1. Tea tree bar with aloe vera (P70) and banana soap (P65) from All Organics. Aside from handmade soap, this stall offers shampoo, body scrub and lotion, lip balm, oil, and a host of other stress-relief essentials made from natural ingredients.

2. A two-kilo bag of organic rice (P130) from Gilded Grains sold at Fresh Place. With rice so expensive these days, the organic kind is now a luxury, so might as well use those Celadon coupons for something necessary. Needless to say, Mom was one happy lady when we gave her this as pasalubong.

3. Greeting cards (four @ P10 each) from the Pangarap Shelter for Street Children. The image covers for these blank cards were made by residents of the foundation and digitally rendered by Ige Ramos. Your purchase of these cards helps the children at the shelter in Pasay City.

4.  Tamarind candies (two @ P10  a pack) from Kaunkit, a stall offering Samar-made delicacies such as bagoong, tahong crackers, binagol, and pinyato.

5. Chocolate cookies (P45), butter cookies (P70), and chocolate cupcakes (icing-topped kind at P35 and plain chocolate ones for P20) at Sweet Thoughts.

6. Kakanin galore at Cafe Amadeo, including suman (P32) and biko (P22). If it weren’t too hot outdoors, it would have been a good idea to have some brewed coffee as well (P20).

7. Gyoza (P20) at the Takoyaki Grill, because after walking around for so long, we needed some energy boost, and some flavored soda for P35.

8. Honey (P70), because it’s the “ber” months and it would be the perfect sweetener for hot calamansi.

There were only a few stalls during the Sunday that we came, but if the exhibitor list is any indication, there should be 30 different stalls offering everything from furnishings, accessories, Filipino and Japanese food, and even Batangas T-bone and ribeye.

More photos on Flickr.

Photo credit: Abbie Maquiling