I didn’t intend to exclufe Far Eastern markets. To the contrary, my aim was to INclude markets from other cuisines and cultures.
H-Mart: mushrooms, frozen octopus for (fairly rare) takoyaki making with my son, frozen cut up goat for stew. Sometimes the live lobster but not often. Noodles of all sorts, sauces beyond San-J etc that my reg doesn’t carry. Skate and shark when i get a wild hair from something I saw on TV (only a few times so far).
Super Mercado: mostly just a wide variety of dried chilis.
Indian: bulk spices at great cost vs the little bottles of spice islands or McCormick (do you know how much coriander goes into turning 4 pounds of beef into biltong? It’s like 3 bottles of the McCormick size). Other spices and dried chilis the others don’t have. EL basmati. Rice flour.
Middle Eastern: sometimes flatbreads (I’m a fan of Barbery bread panini) and pre-made frozen koobideh when I’m lazy. Bulk teas for making kombucha or just a gallon of iced tea. There’s one from Turkey that i like but cant remember the brand.
Central/Eastern Europe: love the cured/smoked meats. Also the filled dumplings and pierogi.
All fairly rare, certainly less than once a month. Maybe a bit more often for Indian depending on what I’m making.
4 Likes
When I’d take the kids along to H-Mart they’d come running up with something, asking, “Dad, what’s this?”
I’d say, “I dunno, put it in the cart and we’ll figure out what to do with it when we get home”. Became sort of a tradition, and a game, that they could each pick one unknown thing.
7 Likes
A NY Times article about Asian markets in the US. Gift link:
2 Likes
There’s a post for that 
Link is just below my original post (and this thread back from there).
Greek: dried lentils, dried beans, Greek pasta shapes, Greek sour cherry spoon sweets, Greek Nescafé for frappes, Dodonis feta, olive oil, vinegar, honey
Polish and other Eastern European: blackcurrant juice, sour cherry juice,sour cherries in glass jars, Hungarian egg noodles, Polish spices, candies and cookies at Xmas
Turkish: olive oil, spices, planning to get frozen Manti at one soon
Lebanese/halal : cheap produce (esp egglants), interesting frozen mains and frozen baklava
Japanese: instant noodles, snacks, spices, canned coffee.
Korean: mostly baked goods, some drinks, canned coffee and chips/ snacks.
Chinese: Prima Taste noodles at T&T
Italian: dried beans, pistachios, tomato sauce, hot table, fruit nectars, Italian bottled peach iced tea, parmesan. Food from the hot table.
3 Likes
I buy lots of kimchi and banchan, along with frozen rice sticks, rice and gochujang at the local Korean grocery.
At the Japanese market, it’s mostly natto, miso and mirin, along with rice and fresh noodles.
At the Thai grocery, I buy curry paste, fish sauce, lime leaves and fresh peppercorns on the stem/vine.
Curry leaves, fresh coconuts, eggplant and spices usually come from a small Sri Lankan grocery, along with tea and snacks.
We have a lot of middle eastern groceries and I love getting fresh phyllo in different thicknesses, zaatar, tahini, meat or cheese pies and halvah.
I am probably forgetting many things, and I always come away with more than what’s on my list from each store.
2 Likes
I live in Sacramento also and visit these same stores. Oto’s is excellent for Japanese items and it’s where I buy Miso, milk bread, Japanese citrus (yuzu, sudachi, etc), Japanese mushrooms, good fish and aged beef. I also get their instant ramen kits in the refrigerated section. Frozen udon noodles.
99 Ranch has a huge selection of Chinese and other Asian imported items. Laoganma, various soy sauces, Asian vinegars, oyster sauce, and other important condiments and sauces for things like hot pot, Taiwanese beef noodle soup, and Taiwanese milk bread (very similar to the Japanese version). I also buy interesting fish. One favorite is golden pompano which shallow-fries up deliciously. Red snapper, turbot, striped bass. Pea greens/shoots, shanghai green tips, bok choy, Hawaiian purple sweet potatoes, yellow dragon fruit (worth the $$$).
At Indian markets I buy all sorts of dried beans and ground spices.
At afghani markets (King Market in Sacramento is a good one) I buy fresh flatbreads baked in house, dairy like danish feta cheese and yogurt like labne and yogurt soda. Basmati rice. Dried fenugreek. Yellow split peas (slow cook variety), pomegranate molasses, rose water, orange blossom water, black loose leaf tea.
Corti brothers: anything Darrell recommends.
3 Likes
I can’t believe I’ve slept on Oto’s so long. The ramen kit availability (which is highly variable at 99 and SF) is gonna be a game changer. And their miso was WAY better priced.
2 Likes
Ernie - We’ll recognize each other with our phones out, deciphering labels, while waiting for our numbers to be called at the fish counter (“chowder fish” tonight). In case you haven’t discovered these yet, the smoked salmon skins are another great no waste item - my husband starts then in a skillet with a little oil, sprinkles with soy sauce and maybe eel sauce (?..…it’s improv), then moves to a 350 oven for about 10
minutes (until crisp). Cut into bite sized pieces - perfection!
1 Like
I don’t think I’ve seen smoked salmon skins. Are they in the seafood case?
I buy items specific to whichever cultural/geographic area the market stocks. I really enjoy trying items specific to/from a particular area because they can either be subtly or extremely different from what I’m used to.
When I’ve been able to travel, it’s not the tourist sites that I make a point of visiting first, it’s the grocery stores and markets. The surprise and delight of trying something new (to me) is what draws me in.
I’m always amused when someone gets offended at the word ethnic. The local British import store is what I’d regard as ethnic, same as the Italian, Indian, Chinese, Nigerian, German, Portuguese, Brazilian, American - you get the picture. I’ve always looked at the word as an invitation to explore and learn about what isn’t the norm for a particular area. We’re all ethnic to someone.
3 Likes
We are all ethnic.
2 Likes
I live within walking distance of a pan-asian supermarket, Good Fortune. Chinese-owned, but you wouldn’t know it from what’s in the aisles.
Also near me is Grand Mart, international. As much hispanic as asian.
We also have a couple of Chinese supermarkets, Great Wall and Ranch 99. Both heavily feature Chinese products. And we have the two big Korean supermarkets, Lotte and H-Mart, whose aisles are stuffed with Korean products. Of course, each of these have some products found in the other stores, but the focus is obvious.
Lotte is furthest out for me, and the low prices make the other stores look scandalous.
I am always finding and exploring new products. Every once in a while a store will get in Knorr’s cans of chicken broth, with Chinese writing on the can. Nobody seems to keep it regularly in stock. That stuff is so good I could just drink it cold right from the can.
Aside from supermarkets, I do have a neighborhood tienda latina, valuable for always having ripe avocado, banana, and other fruits. Also tubs of pork skin lard.
Middle Eastern (mostly Persian or Afghan), Ethiopian, Vietnamese, and Indian markets round out the major possibilities.
.
1 Like
I am not offended by the word ethnic. I just find it insouciantly clueless as it relates to the topic of this thread.
1 Like
I buy anything that looks good that I can’t find at our basic-white-bread grocery stores. Anytime I’m in a town with a store that carries globally influenced ingredients, I’m like a kid in a candy store. I’ll take one of those anda few of those, please.
2 Likes
Some cats like them, too.
Ernie - The salmon skins are in the seafood case, but are rolled and not really visible, so you need to ask for them. I learned about them while waiting in line, seeing what other people were getting and listening to shared techniques and recipes (I seem to always leave there better informed!). And, in case you haven’t found - or needed - fish stock, they sell quarts of frozen house made for a great price….something else I overheard in line!
