Great post-holiday finds at Dapitan Arcade (with the bonus of Suki Market)

As far as markets go, one of my very favorites is right here in Quezon City and just a 10-minute drive from my home. This is Suki Market on Mayon St. which is just off the Welcome Rotonda on Quezon Avenue. It’s a year-round mecca for Chinese families who prize the freshest live seafood, impeccable vegetables and Jas Mart, one of the best Chinese groceries in the metro.

But savvy shoppers in the know also flock to Dapitan Arcade on Dapitan St., which intersects Mayon, in the months building up to Christmas. Located diagonally across Suki Market, this is a terrific source for gifts that include factory overruns, ceramics from China and, more recently, an increasing number of handicrafts from around the country. The stalls of eye-catching wood carvings, sophisticated dinnerware and home décor have even spilt into the adjacent streets, making passageways tight and parking almost all but impossible during the holidays.

This is why, if I remember Dapitan Arcade too late in the season, I don’t make the attempt to visit before Christmas. The crowds and the lack of parking are for me an unnecessary source of stress. I think the best time to visit Dapitan Arcade is actually right after the holidays, when the crowd has all but disappeared, yet many of the unique finds are still available.

At 8:30 a.m. on the weekend after New Year’s, many of the stalls in and around Dapitan Arcade are already open. While waiting for more of them to open shop, I suggest you first visit Jash Mart which is on the periphery of Suki Market. This is a wonderland for cooks, especially those planning a Chinese meal and who need ingredients you can’t find in a regular grocery. Chicken powder? Check. Chicken marinade? Check. Good quality Xiaosing wine? Check. You will also find very good frozen dimsum like hakaw, ready to steam, or all the available flavors of White Rabbit candy.

The aisles of the smallish Suki Market itself are wide, clean, and neat. There is a section with ready-cooked food, vegetable stalls with more than the usual offerings (leafy greens favored in Chinese cooking), and stunning seafood. Special fishes like lapu-lapu, talakitok, and live pearl fish stand out among the more common bangus or tilapia (which are alive and heaving their last breaths). Crab? Of course, but also the rarer talangka. Sea cucumbers, wriggling shrimp, flat sole (dapa), scallops, and other undersea wonders will have your imagination dancing with possibilities.

By the time you’re done at the market and the Chinese grocery, all the stalls at Dapitan Arcade will have opened. From Suki, the first stalls you see on the street are well-carved wooden items, usable and beautifully finished salad bowls, chopping boards, and serving dishes. There are whimsical animals made of twigs, meant to hold perhaps candles or flower arrangements. There are slabs of tree trunks that can be used as serving boards for cheeses and charcuterie, or desserts.

Nearby, also on a streetside stall, are elegant sets of dinnerware that are finely rimmed with gold and set on chargers. Chargers are the formal sort of underplate that go under your dinner plate for very special occasions. You usually see items like these only in our most exclusive department stores. Yet here they are, right on the street, gorgeous set after set in that minimalist kind of design that makes them look expensive. We wish we had engaged friends we could give these to as wedding gifts.

Had I remembered to visit Dapitan Arcade before Christmas, I would have surely bought those whimsical, colorful, yummy-looking donut Christmas ornaments. Or made gifts of very practical, beautifully woven hot plates. Or bought artificial orchids that looked incredibly real from the one stall selling artificial and dried flowers in the arcade. Or any number of cute woven wallets from Bicol plus a lovely set of golden horse heads, actually bookends, as a nod to the coming Year of the Horse. Or these detailed, colorful, mosaic-patterned plates that look like they came from Turkey or Morocco. Or that delicate wrought iron umbrella stand, and that gold guitar-shaped wine rack.