Today is the City of Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn’s 3rd Annual River O’Green Festival in Downtown Tampa at Curtis Hixon Waterfront Park (600 N Ashley Dr. Tampa, FL 33602). The event will run from 11:00AM-4:00PM. The Hillsborough River will be transformed into a bright green color and there will be live entertainment, games, kids activities, food trucks serving Irish faire, beer, and more. The Salvation Army will be on-site taking donations to support their mission of helping those in need.
I have many Filipino friends in Tampa through the Association of Filipino Students at USF and also through the annual Tampa PhilFest. There aren’t many places where you can buy Filipino food in Tampa and when I went to California in 2010 for spring break I went nuts at all the Filipino take-out joints. I learned about the Filipino Market in Seoul through CNN Go and decided I had to have some to see how it fared against the food I have tried.
According to CNN Go there are currently around 7,000 Filipinos living Seoul. Many people (including American Filipinos) were surprised to learn this number when I told them about it. This local community has become a part of this growing weekly market. The market occurs on Sundays every week from 9AM-5PM (they were even open during Chuseok weekend). The market isn’t too far from Yonsei University and we were at Hyehwa Station (Line 4) in just a short while. As soon as we started walking out of the exit we saw a number of Filipino people coming down and knew we were on the right track.
You walk straight for a few minutes until you reach these tents on the right side filled with Filipino goods. The market was packed with people looking to buy some food or items. Most of my friends never tried Filipino food before and were amazed with how good the food was, not to mention the great prices of the food (1,000 won-6,000 won price range). Most of the people there speak English and Korean – a great stop for travelers.
The first thing we had were these Filipino empanadas that tasted packed with flavor. They were sweet and it was actually the first time I have ever tried this style of empanada (it really is interesting how each Latin-influenced country has a different take on the dish).
There was a great deal of produce available at very reasonable prices. If you want to cook your own Filipino dishes at home this is the perfect place to go buy those ingredients.
There was plenty of food to choose from and I predict many trips to this market in my future. Some of the dishes had the price marked, while others seemed to vary depending on how much you got or whether you knew what you were talking about it. One really tasty thing we had was this fresh coconut juice with pieces of coconut inside for 1,000 won. It was sweet and reminded me of a coconut drink I had at The Wat Thai Temple in Tampa before I departed for Seoul.
The halo-halo was probably the most expensive thing I bought. It was 5,000 won, but it was delicious. The mixture of different ingredients was refreshing on a hot summer day and it was quite a change from the halo-halo glasses drinks I am used to. The portion was in this big bowl so I would certainly say it can feed more than one person.
So many things to eat! We also ordered this banana dessert dish. It was super sweet and actually quite good when shared between two people. The lumpia was delicious – you have to remember to ask from some sweet sauce though.
We met Norma Santos at the Filipino Market. She is the founder of the weekly market and spends each week planning out the market. She was very friendly with us and asked us to please call her Tita Norma. I hope to meet her again in the future and ask her more about the history of the market. In this photograph she was grabbing me a root beer (you can find lots of root beer here…one of my favorite sodas). 🙂
Overall, the Sunday Filipino Market is a great way to experience how other cultures have become a part of South Korea and also enjoy some authentic Filipino food for great prices. I look forward to my next visit to the market and meeting Tita Norma once again.
Name: Filipino Sunday Market
Neighborhood: Jongno-gu
Address (English): 58-2 Hyehwa-dong, Jongno-gu
Address (Korean): 종로구 혜화동 58-2
Getting there: Take Subway Line 4 to Hyehwa Station, Exit 1. Walk straight toward Hyehwa Catholic Church. You’ll see the market on your right.
Lately, I have spent some time reading up on some articles on South Korea. I found this website called Matador: a site for traveling, living, and eating around the world. Here are some cool articles I read on their site:
I’ll post some other articles and blogs I am reading in the future. You have to love the internet for having this vast amount of information provided by other people.
Carlos Travels 