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Because Asian markets is my shiznit.
The parking lot is funky. Both times I have been there I could not bring myself to park in that shady lot.
The aroma upon entering the store is eye opening.
This market is closer to my house than the other markets I shop at but it didn't outshine the others. I'd come here only if I couldn't make it to the SGV to my usual. Reason being, this place is too small. I need some damn elbow room when I shop. I don't want to push my cart down a hallway of food while being upset someone else is in the aisle with me. We are going to play chicken down this aisle and I will win.
They don't sell mochi. The first time I went it was nonexistent. Just yesterday I found some. It was near the bread, section three of the market, sitting next to green bread, 5 small pieces, wrapped in plastic wrap. Bleh.
No mock meat but there is inexpensive veggies and snacks. I got a few items but nothing major. I might grow to love this place.
huge crate of clementines for $2.99, which sell at trader for $6.49, and at von$ for $6.99.
go for it!
they are delicious!
black figs still in stock, although not as good as last month's, as the season is already past ... i… Read more »
Dear Americans,
Humans are omnivores, so human food looks like plant parts, animal parts, mushrooms, et c. Humans cook food to improve digestability and nutritional quality and prevent some diseases. The art of cooking is taking the plant and animal parts and combining and processing them to make them more pleasing, healthy, easier to store, et c. If the thing you're eating is so estranged from this basic idea that you can't even identify the plant and animal parts that went into it without reading the lengthy ingredients list, you're doing it wrong.
AGW sells a lot of this actual food, such as kaffir lime (makrud) leaves, yucca root, lemon grass, crabs, fish sauce, oyster mushrooms, or tilapia -- amazingly blazing cheaply. Since this is all real food, you can tell how good it is for you by looking at it, smelling it, and tasting it -- food is what your senses evolved around. Then you may realize that a lot of the food at AGW is actually better than Vons or Trader Joes even though the floor is dirty, the signs are paper and packing tape, and the atmosphere is fishy and sometimes excessively humid.
If I walk out of AGW with as much food as I can carry home, it's still rarely more than $20. For more real food, I go to farmer's markets, India Sweet and Spice in Atwater Village, or the Whole Foods in Glendale.
as other reviewers have said, astounding prices and worlds of produce, asian ingredients, fun finds. it's cramped and funny and i wish i lived closer.
If you're a raw food enthusiast, you'll love this place!!! Well, at least for two essential and kinda rare raw foods!
Frozen Durian. I bought TWO for around $15.00- These are at least $25.00 EACH at specialty places.
Case of 9 young coconuts- $5.99!!! At Whole Paycheck, 1 coconut is $2.50.
A fraction of the cost for both of these wonderful highly nutritious and highly delicious foods!!!
This old-school Vietnamese market made my friggin' day recently when I discovered its existence considering just the day before, I had to go to the only two supermarkets in the area (Vons and Ralphs, both very poorly stocked/little variety might I add) just to find a bottle of fish sauce and paid more than $4 for it to boot!
I think I literally skipped through the A market doors like a giddy little girl and as soon as those distinctive pungent aromas hit me, I was pretty much prancing down the aisles. All the good brands of fish sauce: Phu Quoc, Three Crabs and my beloved ghetto Lucky/Tiparos for under $2 a pop. Super sharp Chinese kitchen knives, just like the ones my mom buys -- for $2 each. Big 25 lb. bags of Jasmine rice for under $20. Big blocks of fresh tofu and soybean milk from Thanh Son in Garden Grove. Vats of pickled mustard greens. A solidly stocked produce section with all my favorites like rau song (watercress), rau muong (water spinach), Thai chilis and even bittersweet melon. Tomatoes that day were on special: four pounds for a buck. Hello? It's like $3-4/lb @ Vons or Ralphs. They even had packaged heirloom tomatoes for under $2. Avocados were 60 cents each. We will be doing most, if not all of our produce shopping here.
We grabbed fresh banh canh (Vietnamese udon) noodles that we later stir-fried with the beef from the meat department that the butchers sliced thinly upon request, awesome. So yeah, it's not exactly sparkling clean, well, it's pretty dingy, but I don't care. And they accept credit cards, yay.
Hooray, hooray. I may have left OC and my beloved local grocers (I'll miss you Mother's Market, Grower's Direct and Irvine Ranch Market!!) and Little Saigon markets, but thank god for A Grocery that's less than a mile from my new place!!!
If you cannot find something here, then I suggest you get a white cane and a guide dog.
This place is amazing for farm fresh vegetables of every and any VARIETY. Variations on every kind of regular and exotic fruit and vegetables that you can find. If you need supplies for a Asian dish of any kind - go here. They clearly cater to Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Chinese and the Hispanic market. For any recipe of any sort - with FRESH ingredients. They have a completely stocked meat counter - with at least 4 servers. They have an extensive variety of exotic meat cuts - pork, beef ,chicken and even goat. They always stock a cut that is called Bavette - prepackaged in the counter basically a loin of fillet - incredible. The have a fully stocked fresh and frozen fish counter. The other side of the entire store is condiments and supplies of anything and everything your tiny mind or recipe book could demand. I mean - it's really unbelievable. To take a complete inventory o what they have - give yourself an hour - not kidding.
Prices - incredible - seriously. The comment in a review on tomatoes below- I'm still shaking my head at that... seriously woman...
If I have in any way exaggerated this review - message me.
This place is a treasure trove Cons:- it is out of the way, unless you live nearby - it's on Sunset close to Dodger stadium and Downtown - It rocks!!
Update: 11/24/08: Live lobsters $7/lb but they were huge! 4-5 pounds each! This is a great deal!
I recently enjoyed a Thai dish that used fresh peppercorns on the stem and when gaga over that dish. I immediately walked 4-5 blocks down the street to the Thai Plaza grocery store to search out the fresh Thai peppercorns and found them in the frozen foods case. Anyway, since then every Asian market I go to I look for those peppercorns and yesterday I found them here, but these were green instead of black and they were bottled in brine instead of frozen. Just cooked with them this morning making a corned beef hash and eggs with my precious peppercorns and it was delicious!
I've been going to this market occasionally for over 10 years. As far as Asian markets go, it above average because it has good prices on produce, booze, deli items and good prices on many staples. It also carries some hard to find Asian spices, sauces, noodles and such.
I tend to avoid most Asian markets meat/fish counters unless they are supremely spotless and clean. This place, sorry I've only bought ground pork or ground chicken as far as meats.
Produce is probably the star of the market as sometimes they have some fantastic deals or rare foods. Last time I was there they had fresh JuJuBe's and the very friendly produce clerk chatted with me a long time and she gave me one to taste. It sorta tasted like an unripe apple. A bit dull in flavor, but she said it was not yet ripe and needed many more days before they turn sweet. I did score on some really fresh green beans, tomatoes on the vine for 69 cents and a ton of other bargain priced produce to fill my hand basket to capacity.
I found the bottled peppercorns for $2.49 and I bought two bottles and now I know where I can find this precious spice! I now know why Columbus and Magellan went is search of this most precious and delicious spice. Until I tasted these fresh, I could never figure out why explorers and Kings were so hot to get pepper. Now I know. The bottle green peppercorns have a bit less flavor than the frozen black peppercorns, but both are still amazing.
Their Thai curry sauces and other staples are a little more expensive than in Thaitown but their produce selection is better than anythere in Thaitown.
One of my favs for cheap produce and deli kim chee. Definitely a good resource, but not a one stop has everything place for me.
moved here from sf and used to shop in chinatown alot.. this is by far one of the best grocery stores i have been in in years!! i bought spices, curry paste, veggies.. i cannot speak for their meat selection but everything else looked awesome! huge selection of cooking staples. very friendly and helpful staff. will be going back there many times!
So its the weekend and i was walking around doing errands. I decided to get some caffeine in my system so off to the store for some soda and or pop depending where you are from. Passing my normal spots and decided to go to this asian grocery store i pass all the time walking to dodger games. It was more just an excuse to check it out. ive been walking by for years but since i have a closer grocery right across the street ive never been to this one.
Was I in for a surprise what strange land did I enter. They had a wide variety of asian food/ingredients. Their snack aisle they had things like shrimp chips and a bag of watermelon seeds. They had freaky drinks as well like cans of chrysanthemum tea and chocolate flavor energy drinks. I got one and it tasted like yoo-hoo i was kinda disapointed. I wanted like a chocolate rush on energy to overcome me like the soccer player on the can but nope.
If i actually could cook things seems like the place to go for any asian food you want to make. My father would love this place but since cooking to me is pouring milk on my cerial I cant appreciate it as much.
They also had a aisle or two of dishes and cooking instruments. i ended up grapping my pop, energy drink, some kind of grape gummy candy and a bag of snack mix stuff. Checkout was pretty slow but prices were good. Oh also got a pack of those green cleaning sponge things for 79 cents. Its like 3 for a buck at my store. I plan to go back and check it out more and stock my apt with stuff so when people come over it will be like
"Hey want a drink and something to snack on?"
"Sure what ya got"
"Well lets see i have watermelon seeds and chrysanthemum tea."
O_o
I walked around looking at their stuff for a while but i prob missed somethings there is no telling what they have there. I bet you could buy dragon meat or fried leprechaun toes.
I spent this past weekend totally wiped out and running around like a nut -- all sorts of comings and goings to get my old couches out, my new couch in, my shag rug cleaned, an Ikea run, a Sunday morning hike, a sunburn, too much gymming, and missing my bestie hard.
The only thing I really wanted to do on Saturday night was relax. Mike suggested we make dinner (another one of our patented Cooking with Morons exercises) and then see what we wanted to do after. He got it into his head that we were going to make Thai curry, which I was too tired to argue with.
A Grocery Warehouse is a few blocks up from his place, so we walked up in the late afternoon sunshine, readying our palates for curry goodness. They have tons of stuff here! I was surprised by how big the place was. Lots of yummy produce outside (the cherries were a welcome snack), great prices on all of it, nice help. Inside, I was honestly afraid of the fish -- live or dead, all of it staring at me. But we got some insanely good bamboo shoots and bean sprouts to throw in the mix, and I was stoked. The only wrench in the plan was we couldn't find any rice that wasn't sold in 25 pound bags.
All in all, we got tons of great ingredients at a good price. I'll totally go back. I just can't hang with those fish.
Oh, and the curry? Delicious.
This is a pretty amazing place. Lots of cheap produce, and lots of random, interesting products. I am not the kind of person that gets all of her groceries in one place, so I can appreciate stopping by here on the way home every so often to pick up some produce and Asian snacks, and just having fun going down the aisles.
The checkout took a looong time. I wasn't very patient, and almost left. But I also have bad luck with checkout lines. They take debit cards, but charged me 50cents or something cause I spent less than $20. That was fine with me, because I bought tomatoes for 30 cents a pound, and yummy tangerines for 50 cents a pound.
Great place!! Go for fun, not when you're in a hurry and need something specific.
(The aisles seem way too narrow to be wheelchair accessible).
This market rocks. It looks from the outside like a basic Chinese market, given the Chinese characters and the proximity to Chinatown. But you are wrong. It is not Chinese. Or...maybe it is not ONLY Chinese. The products in this market cover a huge cross section of Asian food types. Chinese, Japanese, Southeast Asian, Phillippines...
They have durian, star fruit, mangos, papaya, jujubes, bananas, long beans, zillions of types of rice, hundreds of different kinds of canned fruit (things I have never heard of). They have a GREAT deli with food from different places in Asia. I have seen curries and boba type offerings...the butcher counter is a force to be reckoned with. I can get beef here and ask them to slice it for shabu shabu and they know what I am asking for. Do not ask them to de-skin you fish, however, they will say no.
I could wander around in here all day and constantly discover things I have never heard of and things I never wanted to see. They also have some high end liquors, which I find entertaining and well priced.
And I am going to have to go with NOT wheelchair accesible. The aisles in there are so narrow, it is somewhat claustrophobic.
LOVE. IT.
This place is my go to spot for fresh and cheap produce. They have so many great Asian vegetables that you won't find at a Von's, plus all the regulars like carrots, etc. for great prices. You'll find durian here, ya'll. Additionally, there is a cheap meat counter and an extensive fish counter, all sorts of Asian products like fresh tofu and sesame seed balls and packaged snacks. There is an entire aisle dedicated to noodles and other starches. And one dedicated to sauces and spice and condiments galore. I think this is a Vietnamese based grocery but they have a good selection of items from other Asian cuisines. I refused to move out of this neighborhood because I love this store so much.
It's Whole Foods for broke, disenfranchised fringe-dwellers and Asian grannies.
Except there's not alot of pesticide-free, organic farmer action in here. Some of the fish in the seafood section is sure to be on the overfished list. And there's no way the animals at the meat counter died humanely at the hands of a benevolent butcher.
But the pickle bar is smokin.' And the Asian candy and the cheap utensils in the dry goods section? A+.
There's a 50% chance your ride will get dinged in the postage-stamp parking lot. It's often crammed with drivers in minivans incapable of navigating tight spots.
This is your average chinese grocery store. Lots of fresh fruits and veggies, and it's wayy cheaper than Vons down the street! The other day I got tomatoes at Vons- $3 a lb?!! Would it be cheaper to eat out or what?
It's really cold in here. There's a little boba stand inside! Good desserts. You can get all your asian cooking ingredients here- they have it ALL.
A Grocery reminds me of the markets in Little Saigon but I don't have to drive to Orange County or even San Gabriel Valley for Asian produce and products. That said, you should not mistake this place for the Nature Mart or a place that carries organic food.
They have a deli section where you can pick up packaged foods, pickled vegetables, and tofu (try the tofu pudding with ginger sauce). You can pick up your bok choy or long beans for dinner. My bf picks up his shiso leaves here when he cooks--which is all the time. They have a meat counter, aisles of fish sauce, cheap housewares, aisles of Asian beer,(try a Vietnamese beer) and the typical liquors under lock and key.
Check the dates on the packaged food since the items seem to be trucked in from Orange County as I hope you all would do anyway regardless of where you shop.
I go when the place opens before there are too many cars in the tiny lot. This place is ding and/or accident-waiting-to-happen parking lot.
If you are lucky enough to find it you will stumble on to a produce gold mine. They have a huge selection of fresh fruit and vegetables and sell them for about half of what you pay at Ralphs or Vons. They lack some of the bigger american branded products (if you're looking for fruit roll ups or digiorno you're out of luck), but if you actually like to cook like I do this place has everything you need for a meal.
This place is nearly invisible from the street. If you hang out at the Short Stop it's basically next door.
This market has been a staple in my youth. I remember going here a lot as a kid with my mom, running into my classmates and their parents. This was when Echo Park was filled with crime and poverty. Not the hip Echo Park we all know and love today. This was the one market within walking distance that catered to the Asian community. It is, what it is. It's not a VONs or a Trader Joes. It's a humble family owned market. Trust me when I say, it has come a LONNNG way. There are a lot more Americanized products. Fresh French bread. All the tasty Asian cookies and treats you can only get from an Asian market. Asian fruits and veggies you can't get at any other market around the area. Take it for what it is and love it for what it is.
This is where my family buys all their groceries..otherwise known as the fobulous term "palenke" I hate the tiny small parking lot that smells like a sewer...you have fruits and vegetables outside and you have staff eyeing you like a hawk making sure you don't steal anything..produce not that fresh rather go to Super King..the butcher guys are horn dogs..went in there with shorts and a tank top on a hot summer day and they were drooling...ill..wear a bib...I like buying their fresh Canadian crab when it's on sale for $2.99 a pound..they have a boba bar..desserts..and fried eggrolls in a small hut inside..they also sell herbs not Mj but tea..cashier uptight and you have to watch how they ring you on the register..because they can overtax you=(
I really like this place! When I lived in Echo Park there were not many choices, but this place fit the bill. There produce mainly cators to asain cooking, but it's got some nice stuff; minty basil, good wok veggies, see-weeds and mushrooms, ginger candy, and great tea selection.and this wacky pickle/kimchy bar. They also have "duriun" that stinky fruit with the spikes that smells like feet!! Some day I have to try it, I've tried every possible exotic mistery-meat but I'm still scared to try the spikey stink fruit. I used to think that the smell in this store was spoiled meat, untill to my relief I fount it was the duriun PEE EUUU!
One of the things that I really like about them is being Vietnamese they have some French stuff also, I found these buttery tea cookies that I used to always eat in Italy when I was a child.
But really, this place is pretty good, and their fish, shrimp, and clams are fresh and affordable. I made "spaghetti with vongole" using their fresh clams, SQUIZITO!
no parking, smells, cant get in or out of your parking spot, isles' are too small.... if this dont stop you than your down... enjoy...Bread cheep and lots of everything to make your favorite dish...great deals on fish to sauce...
this place is cool..and i like it cuz i can walk to it...
this place is huuuge! and they have tons of hot sauces and chili sauces and types of booze that i've never even heard of! not to mention fresh jackfruit and lots of other cool things. most of the employees don't speak english. but one lady does. i think she had a crush on my friend sean.
yes. a sewer is a good description. the whole place kinda smells a bit like a sewer, esp. the parking lot. the produce looks beat up. the cash register next to the alcohol looks like they picked it up from the st. vincent's junk yard. *and* i discover that they sold the exact same pineapple at an entire dollar more than whole foods. *whole foods*! the place that's supposed to cost u ur "whole paycheck"! but this is the only place i know within a few miles of my house with a good variety of chinese/vietnamese foods. so i go when i can't make it to alhambra or sumn...
the bad: 90 percent of the clientele can't seem to grasp driving techniques, so be careful and walk there if you can, on occasion i drive there on my way home and i've almost been in an accident a few times with people trying to turn into or out of the teeny tiny lot. also, the horrible smells from the meat department. i'd rather eat meat from ralph's than this place and that's pretty frickin low on the list.
the good: produce! man, i can walk out of there with about 20 pounds of fresh produce for super cheap. green onions? 5 bunches for a $1. and a few good cheap wines (i know trader joes has 2 or 3 dollar bottles, but it's a lot farther to go for me) for under 8 bucks. big bottles of sake. stainless steel knives for practically nothing, i am not kidding. an awesome selection of beer and cheaper than any of the liquor stores nearby. 4 pound bags of brown rice for $4. and all sorts of weird shit you would never have imagined eating (and some you probably never should!). also, if you're in a bind and you need some cheap tp or paper towels, they've got you covered, but i still prefer my kinder softer national brands for regular tp use.
i love this place and sometimes getting a beer at the shortstop in the late afternoon makes it doubly worth it to walk down to this awesome little savior of vegetables and time.
Neighborhood: Echo Park
Category: Libraries
Neighborhood: Glassell Park
Category: Grocery
Los Angeles, CA
Category: Grocery
Neighborhood: Silver Lake
Category: Grocery
Neighborhood: Chinatown
Category: Chinese
My local dry cleaner, watering hole, deli, cafe,…
Everything they dont carry at Ralphs Vons, or…
![sidewalk entrance to fruit & vegetable + the store itself [you can also enter directly from their pkg lot]](http://static4.px.yelpcdn.com/bphoto/_o6-FZJkFoxvVFfVUE8jPw/xss){kind=small}
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