Asian Groceries Like H Mart and Patel Brothers Are Reshaping America

My family is from Iran, and I always appreciate that stores like H-Mart and Lotte stock hard-to-find ingredients outside of Korean cooking staples. They are our go-to for large quantities of fresh mint/parsley/cilantro/tarragon, fresh fenugreek, fresh fava beans in the pod, cardamom, yellow split peas, and more. A dedicated persian grocery store can be hard to find, and many don't carry certain fresh ingredients.

It's also a joy to wander around and discover new foods from all over the world - fresh lychee, frozen puffed tofu, salted puffed mung beans, and soursop juice are all things I only got to try because of H-Mart or Lotte. Their seafood selection is also incredible.

Early in the pandemic my partner and I decided that, since we couldn't actually travel anywhere interesting any more, we'd instead do our weekly shop at a different international supermarket every week.

We live in the San Francisco Bay Area so there are a LOT of international supermarkets!

We found Indian, Mexican, South American, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Middle Eastern - but my favourite ended up being the Korean Kukje supermarket in Daly City.

Eventually we realized that the trick is to go with at least one recipe in mind, which turns it into a more structured effort to find those ingredients (and then impulse buy lots of other interesting things).

There's Nijiya Market, the Japanese grocery chain. The SF bay area has several locations. Good for bento boxes. They also have the good Pocky, from Japan, not the version made in Thailand for the US market.

(US bento boxes are amusing. There's a chain restaurant near me which offers them, but they're super-sized, the size of a cafeteria tray.)

I wish curry leaves in particular were more commonly available at common grocery stores: ingredients like tumeric, thai basil, and lemongrass now often are, but hardly ever curry leaves.

A Patel Brothers opened near my house. I, whiter than Wonder Bread, wandered in to see what they had. I went to the back where they had snacks and baked goods. I wanted to try something but the employee warned me that it would be quite spicy and steered me to some somosas.

There's a lot of things that I have no idea what they are but also a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. The place is big.

I have both H Mart and Patel Brothers near me. While Patel Brothers is newer in my area and has only been around a few years, H Mart has been a staple for over a decade of shopping. Some items are cheaper, and some items are not sold at the trading US supermarkets.

H Mart is the goat of Asian markets, perhaps only rivaled by Mitsuwa

The H-Mart in our area (Burlington Mass) is no longer the bargain that it once was in certain product areas. We noticed some of the chilled Korean cooked food was subdivided into smaller packages even as prices have risen. Seafood such as uncut sushi fish and fish roe as well as whole fish are also a lot more pricey.

Fortunately, we have alternatives, including really good Vietnamese markets in Dorchester and the Patel Bros in Waltham Mass -- still very old school, very cheap for produce, and lots of really special things you can't get elsewhere.

It's crazy how much cheaper H Mart is for fish than something like Safeway in the bay area.

Does anyone else feel struck with a sense of shameful naivety when you discover (as I just did now) that your beloved local whatever store is actually a nationwide chain?

I once visited a local Patel Brothers store and it had what looked like dried cow dung patties on the shelf.

Later I've found out it is used for ritual burning and, since that is difficult to obtain in an urban setting, online retailers are selling it too.

Even found a review on Amazon of a person complaining that it tasted terrible.

Taking the downvotes....

It seems like a micro-agression (not sure what word to use) that Safeway, Lucky's, Vons, etc are "grocery stores" but 99 Ranch, K-Mart, Pacific Supermarket are "Asian Grocery stores". Effectively, you're "normal" if you go to a "grocery store" but you're abnormal if you go to an "asian grocery store".

I think they should rename/reclassify the "mostly based on European culture groceries stores" as something a little less "this is the norm".

This is especially true in majority Asian areas since going to Safeway, Lucky's, Vons, etc is probably not the norm.

https://bestneighborhood.org/race-in-san-francisco-ca/

And, even though I know there will be lots of downvotes, it sure would be nice to hear some argument for why this doesn't matter. It's effectively telling people they're foreigners. If you weren't a foreigner you'd go to the "grocery store" but because you're not really part of here you go to an "asian grocery store". It's pretty clear, at least to me, the one of those is considered the "norm" and other the exception and it follows there's a judgement there.