IT was one of those days that a day shouldn’t be… dark, gloomy and wet. The city’s filth flowed through the gutter as if a chopper squad sprayed metal to everything in sight.

I didn’t even know where I was. All I know was that the stench of butchered flesh was choked by the thick dense of the rain, you can easily identify that something got their belly ripped open and left their guts to spill. Everyone has knives with them here, even the babes. Huge knives that can close your head in an accident. If it ain’t big, it sure is long enough to chisel a faucet at your backside and pump the living daylights out of you. I think I’m in a meat market. When you are scared to your wits end, it’s wise to tell yourself where you are, what to do and when to say something. I look around and everyone seemed to be giving me an up-and-down stare. No one was moving except a bald chinese guy fit for an executioner with a  red dragon tatoo that flies from his left arm, down to his chest and up to his right arm. He was carefully sharpening his cleaver while giving me the stare with the left corner of his lip snaking up as if telling me “you’re in the wrong place pal”. Maybe I was in the wrong place. I was the only one walking in the rain. I sought for shelter and took a left turn. I found myself in a narrow alley. I didn’t see anything except for a cloud of thick smoke. Since I was off the track, I braved the gashouse and walked through the uncertainty.

“Batchoy?”. An old woman greeted me with her gnarled hands, grabbing my paw and sitting me on a log in the exact angle of a  long L-shaped table. I looked to the left and to the right. I was in the ranks of butchers, coppers, patsies and whores. The loud thud straightened me. She dropped a bowl that looked like a veteran of a thousand meals in front of me. The old woman walked to me while gloving up a cellophane mitten. She reached under the table and came back with paraphernalia only to be used by surgeons. She kept saying the word “batchoy… batchoy… batchoy”. Her old, shivering hands shot dry noodles in my bowl. She then grabbed a pair of scissors and a long trail of what seems to be innards, intestines to be exact. I could hear the scissors snip pieces of intestines, they bounced and ricocheted on the noodles, they were in my bowl. The next thing I knew, she was holding what seems to be someone’s liver and the scissors did their job again as if she and the scissors were one hatchetmen. Snip, snip, snip. Batchoy, batchoy, batchoy, she spits in whispers. She threw in a few more ammunition for this dish and finally poured in a broth from a cauldron of dried bones. She bobbed an inch to my face and gave me a looker’s smile and said Batchoy again.

I couldn’t say no. I sipped the noodles, I chewed the intestines, I gnawed the liver, I drank the broth, I masticated the entire bowl.

I heard my thoughts drill my head.

Batchoy… batchoy… batchoy.

To be continued…

Click here for Ingredients for a La Paz Batchoy Recipe

This is a one whole roasted cow sniffing something from a foil. Looks familiar junkie?

Charcoal grilled tuna fillets. Absolutely beautiful.

I would have wanted to post more if I had more but alas, two pictures are the most that I can salvage. Good thing there’s Kris and her blog My Food Notebook to remind me of what a loser I am because Salcedo Market is just around the corner from where she is. Here are a few bits from her post:

“It was our very first Salcedo Market experience. I say “the first” for two reasons. One, that we will be back there a lot more times. Two, going to Salcedo Market is truly an experience. The sights and smells of the place is just amazing. And while I can’t share with you the smells of Salcedo Market, I can most definitely give you the sights…”

Here you go with the sights. I have no words. Tell us if you’ve been there too.