I live in a small city with several mom-and-pop Korean grocery stores. When an H-Mart opened in a large city about an hour drive away, we’d drive there once a month or so. Initially, we found the store cheaper than the local stores, so it was worth the drive to stock up a month’s worth of our grocery needs. After their initial attempt to attract the shoppers, however, their prices have gone up in ensuing years to the point where there was no need to drive an hour away except to get some items that our local stores don’t carry due to their limited space and operation.
In any given city with the Korean-American population, you’ll find small mom-and-pop Korean grocery stores providing the necessary grocery needs to the community. With the H-Mart’s large presence, these small grocery stores were hit very hard, often forcing them to close their businesses. For this reason, I now tend to shop locally rather than driving an hour away. My personal experience at the H-Mart hasn’t been all that positive, anyway, so that gave another reason to shop locally. 99% of the non-Korean floor employees at the H-Mart do not speak or understand English, so it’s very difficult to nearly impossible to ask anyone for help in finding an item and other needs of communication. On one occasion, I took my brand new DSLR camera with me to the store because I didn’t want to leave it in the car unattended. To my great irritation, I had one employee follow me everywhere after giving me a warning not to take any photos inside the store. I had to show him the image displays to assure him that no photos were taken inside the store. Gave me a bad taste in my mouth. Always check the expiration dates, too, as I’ve found that they’re not all that vigilant about taking expired products off their shelves. When you see sales items, do check the expiration dates on them, too, as they like to have on sale those items that are very close to being expired.
If H-Mart is indeed associated with Chun, it’s even more reason for me not to give them any business. The Taxi Driver mentioned by @ProfessorPlum168 is an excellent film depicting the Gwang Ju Massacre, one of the saddest chapters in Korean history.
As a Korean-American, I cook primarily Korean dishes, followed by some Japanese and Chinese. I typically visit Maangchi.com to look for certain Korean dishes and ingredients but I always improvise to my own cooking methods.
@1NJParent
Thank you, I didn’t know the Okinawan sweet potato is widely sold since I only go to one Asian market occasionally, and they are one of the main reasons I go there. Just love them. Pressure cook them for 5’ and they are ready to eat. The purple ones (outside also purple) sold at WFs during holidays are far inferior in taste).
@Hamurtle
That’s a good idea. I will remember to ask the shop-owner next time about the seeds. Our Asian market has a lot more variety of green leafy vegetables while regular grocery stores have far fewer selections (kale, collard greens, cabbages, spinach).
Re. garlic scapes, IMO, the ones from farmers’ market are often swirly and tend to be more fibrous/stronger flavor while the one sold at my Asian market is straight/shorter with milder taste.
Radish leaves are very tasty and when I buy daikon radish I will get the ones with good looking leaves and cook them separately. So are celery “leaves”, I don’t understand why grocery stores always chop them off. Lol
I recommend getting lots of the greens and following generic Chinese or other Asian greens recipes. They can be subbed pretty easily and you will discover which ones you like best. I like the recipes with soy and some cornstarch and the greens can be served at room temp. The frozen Korean rice cakes are delicious with Korean pepper paste, meat, and veggies. Like pasta, but more so. Try different noodles, fresh and dried. Ramen, soba, get a selection and find recipes. I like to cook Thai best, so get a Thai cookbook from the library and make a list. The Asian groceries have Bunches of Thai basil that I can’t find elsewhere and give a unique flavor to Thai curries.
I will agree with @TiggerDad that the independent Korean groceries are way better. There is one place that I go to that has has legitimate banchan. Marinated spicy crab, clams and oysters marinated in gochujang, and kimchi from vegetables other than Napa cabbage and radish. And where the workers speak to you in Korean if you look Asian, even if you’re not ethnic Korean.
My husband sometimes shops at Ranch 99 for Chinese vegetables, but I won’t go there because I don’t trust their sanitation. One day I was returning home from a bike ride to San Jose for something (jury duty maybe? some administrative task anyway) and stopped off there to get a snack. They have these long steam tables of dim sum and other prepared food. I picked out something and bought it, brought it outside to eat, and it was not hot. That is, they were selling room temperature food from a supposed steam table. I walked right back inside to complain. After I insisted a while and waited at the customer service counter, they returned my money.
They never did what I wanted them to do, namely stop selling food from this unsafe steam table that clearly wasn’t working and was food poisoning waiting to happen.
For the Silicon Valley folks, there is a Chinese grocery called Marina. There is unusual stuff there, but it is the filthiest place around. Ranch 99 looks like Stanford Hospital sanitationwise compared to Marina. Marina has the sticky fly traps hanging around in their seafood/meat department and it smells worse than Ranch 99.
The cleanest Ranch 99 I ever saw used to be a Nob Hill Grocery. Wide aisles, workers cleaning up, and and the hot food actually looked edible.
For fresh meat, H-Mart is way better. I might get specific Chinese ingredients at a Ranch 99. But your mileage will vary.
FWIW, the Marina chain has different owners for each store, so YMMV. The ones in Cupertino and San Mateo, unorganized shall we say. The one in Milpitas, ok, and the one in Fremont is very nice.
When I first decided to delve into authentic Thai cooking, circa 1990, I took my copy of Madhur Jaffrey’s Far Eastern Cookery with me to the only real Asian market I could find, which was in Bridgeport, CT. The people who worked there were very pleasant but spoke very little English. The great thing about that cookbook, other than the delicious recipes, is that there are pages and pages of color photos in the back detailing just about anything you might need, from things in jars and cans, to vegetables, spices, dried ingredients, you name it.
Nowadays a lot of things have bi-lingual labeling. Back then they didn’t.
H Mart is the only store I can find that sells Milkis. It is a drink consisting of corn syrup, sugar, milk, carbonated water and a fruit flavor. My children’s friends introduced it to them so I buy it as a treat a couple of times a year.
Obe are available at several of the markets here but I live in a diverse area.
@twinsmama Thank you for mentioning Maangchi, her videos and site look super useful. I’ve already watched all four about a supermarket. Maybe I could find similar sources for other cuisines.
The watermelon radish is supposedly a kind of daikon native to China. Ranch 99 has those, although I’m not much of afficianado-wife buys it often and it’s an acquired taste.
Chinese celery is good for stir-fries. It’s flavor is way different from western celery.
Garlic scapes are in season right now. I got a whole bunch of them from our CSA last week. We have one nearby farmer’s market that sells a lot of Asian vegetables. There’s an Indo-Pak store in town that is great for spices, and stuff like curry leaves that I’ve never seen anywhere else. Another town has a Japanese market which has sushi grade fish and a bunch of spice mixtures, fish cakes and things that I never see anywhere else. I’ve taken to ordering stuff on Amazon. It’s easier than hunting everything down. When we were in Hong Kong I learning to make a Szichuan style dumpling which needed a pickled vegetable. It wasn’t in any local store, but I found it with no problem on line.
Once again people refer to “Asian” without clarifying which part of Asia. The Indian subcontinent is also a part of Asia. Vastly different foods than the Pacific Rim countries. Thank goodness for Patel Brothers starting their chain decades ago by now.
If ever wanting to shop in an oriental market in Portland, Maine…Sun Oriental Market on Congress street is the best. Nice and clean, run by a second generation Korean family with good selection of Korean, Chinese, Thai, and Japanese. We’ve been going there for 25+ years, though only in the summer for the past 23. Even after living in Asia for so long and in different parts with different cuisines, it’s still a great little Asian Market.
