FDR Park’s Southeast Asian Market reopens this weekend

April in Philly means the return of baseball, cherry blossoms, generally warm weather, and PHS Pop Up Gardens. It also marks the annual opening of FDR Park’s Southeast Asian Market, the food-centric weekend tradition that features pop-up vendors selling fresh-pressed sugarcane juice, lemongrass-basted chicken wings, skewers of fragrant Cambodian sausage, stir-fried noodles, fresh produce, and a myriad of other treats that run the gamut from savory to sweet.

Starting April 1, the market is open Saturdays and Sundays, rain or shine, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Its location changes in mid-summer. Look for it near the park’s Broad Street exit from April to June, and closer to Taney Field and Edgewood Lake from July to October. (There’s a permanent home earmarked for the market in the southwest corner of the park in FDR’s controversial renovation plan, which officially broke ground last May and is scheduled to last until 2026.) The market’s season ends in October.

Last year the market boasted more than 70 vendors, representing culinary and cultural traditions from Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Many of the foods you’ll find there — made-to-order papaya salad, segments of bamboo stuffed with coconut sticky rice, and stuffed chicken wings — are labor-intensive and lovingly prepared by the vendors in the days leading up to the weekend. Market coordinator Catzie Vilayphonh recommends bringing cash and arriving early.

While the SEA Market has become a widely recognized gem in Philly’s culinary landscape, it has blazed a long path to reach that point. It started informally, with Lao and Cambodian refugees gravitating to the park after they resettled here in the ’70s and ’80s.

“Here is this big park, it’s green, and it reminds the Southeast Asian people of the jungles they have at home,” Vilayphonh told the Inquirer in an interview last year.

The vendors started setting up gradually over the years, with one woman selling chicken skewers, another beef sticks, yet another papaya salad. “It would multiply because somebody else would also be selling something else that you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, I like that too. Let me go make my rounds,” Vilayphonh said. She remembers spending summer afternoons in her youth at FDR Park in the ’80s going from vendor to vendor, assembling an all-out picnic for her family.

“When it first started, it kind of just looked like these large swaths of families just having a barbecue,” she said. “Maybe early ’90s is when it was like a market that you could recognize. ... that’s when people started lining up to each other.”

Vendors faced police resistance early on, a legacy that makes some of them reluctant to speak to reporters even today. “When the police raids happened,” Vilayphonh remembers, “their food destroyed. It was dumped out in the streets or destroyed or taken from them. ... They made sure that these people weren’t able to serve and sell whatever they were serving and selling after that day.” Some summers, vendors were discouraged enough to stay home entirely.

Even in the last five years, the market was characterized as “secret” and “underground,” but it has grown increasingly organized since 2020. There’s a vendors association board and assigned stalls, as well as an application and training process for new vendors. The planned permanent home and a $100,000 grant from the city cements its place in FDR Park.

That’s lucky for Philadelphians looking for something to do on a sunny weekend. Besides all the food, vendors sell toys, plants, clothes, and other wares. When you’re tired of shopping and eating, there’s a beautiful 348-acre park to explore.

“You can spend all day here,” Vilayphonh said. “It’s almost like people get to experience being in Southeast Asia without even going further than South Philly.”