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Dragon Star Oriental Foods
Categories: Food Grocery Food Specialty Food Ethnic Food Grocery, Ethnic Food [Edit]
633 Minnehaha Ave WSaint Paul, MN 55104
Neighborhood: Midway
(651) 488-2567
- Price Range:
-
$$
- Accepts Credit Cards:
- Yes
- Parking:
- Private Lot
- Wheelchair Accessible:
- Yes
17 reviews for Dragon Star Oriental Foods
Review Highlights
"The have a decent selection of fresh seafood."
(in 4 reviews)
"The produce section was awesome - great prices and a lot of..."
(in 3 reviews)
"...seeing familiar, and very unfamiliar, products everywhere I..."
(in 3 reviews)
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17 reviews in English
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Review from Luther M.
Saint Paul, MN
2/5/2011
Practically every time I get here it's better. Yes, it's got a definite funk factor, and it seem to focus on SE Asian, esp. Thai, to the expense of old school Chinese, but it's so good who could be bothered too much.
Herbs alone are a reason to shop here. Plentiful, fresh, and super inexpensive for the quality. Today, in the middle of winter, they had basil, Thai basil, and Vietnamese (?!?!?wow) basil. Mints, tender watercress, beautiful fresh epazote. Lots of other great fruit and veg.
Fish & seafood: today they had at least four types of head-on shrimp. in addition to loads of other head off shrimp. They had live conch. Not frozen, these were live, frisky in water live conch. Stuff like that just makes me want to hang out at the store, follow home any purchaser of this type of food, and knock hungrily at their door with an empty bowl in my hands an hour or two later.
I've not checked prices but the jade selection at the instrore jewelry store is beautiful. -
Review from Karleen M.
Minneapolis, MN
10/20/2011 1 Check-in Here
This place has EVERYTHING.. well almost everything you may want from an asian store. They recently remodeled and have whole new warehouse for more products.
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Review from Sam H.
8/13/2011 1 Check-in Here
FIFTEEN DOLLARS FOR THREE FULL BAGS OF FOOD, nuff said.
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Review from Norton L.
Shoreview, MN
Wow. What a difference. This place used to be dirty, grimy, and just down right gross. But they've remodeled. And now it's clean, bright, and well organized.
Frankly, I've avoided them for so long, I forgot what the original layout was like. Now, the meat department rivals that of the warehouse grocery stores, they have a large number of water tanks for fresh fish and seafood (including crab, clams, and various sizes of snails) and their entire seafood section is very impressive. They had squid, 7 or 8 kinds of shrimp, and large frozen octopus, just to name a few.
They have a decent sized produce department with fresh fruit and vegetables, but their frozen section isn't very big. What's odd, too, is that the frozen foods is kind of in the middle of the produce department. I guess they figure the cold can help keep the vegetables fresh, but it was kind of strange.
They also now have a small counter area that you could call a deli. They sell freshly made food as well as bubble tea. There was a decent line there, so it must be pretty good. When we were there, they were out of the "bubbles" for bubble tea, so that must be popular for them.
We were there Sunday around lunch time and they were very busy. The parking lot was packed and a little tough to navigate. But it was a pleasant surprise to see how much they had improved. Dragon Star may be our new favorite Asian market to shop at. I know my wife has and will go here first for fresh seafood.Listed in: Asian Markets
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Review from Patti I.
10/17/2009 ROTD 3/8/2010
I cook primarily Chinese food, and while this market has great prices and a good selection of vegetables, it caters more to a Southeast Asian clientele--makes sense, since it's on the edge of Frogtown. The store is clean and bright and has tanks of fresh fish. I also see a lot of Africans shopping here and buying distinctly non-Asian ingredients (several varieties of plantains.)
I live in the east metro, and if I need Asian vegetables or a couple of basic ingredients, I stop in here instead of driving over to United Noodle in Minneapolis. The produce department seems to have a brisk turnover, so I can always count on finding something fresh. However, I like to keep frozen jiaoze (dumplings) and steamed buns on hand, and this place has only a small selection. Still, it's a lot of fun to browse the aisles.Listed in: Asian Grocery Stores in the…
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Review from Sal K.
10/6/2008
Every shopping experience here is a good one - especially when it's time to take out the wallet. I can buy all the ingredients for mock duck spring rolls and other Asian favorites for *so* much less here. And if I'm trying a new recipe using ingredients I've never purchased before, the staff helps me find what I need with a smile.
I especially love this store for their fresh herbs, mushrooms, awesomely priced mock duck, tofu, snacks, unique and interesting foods. I never leave this store without buying something new to try. -
Review from Kristen H.
Los Angeles, CA
5/4/2009
Killing some time waiting for Big Daddy's BBQ to open, we stumbled onto this grocery store. Now, I don't actually cook 'Asian' food all that often and so am far from qualified to actually review the quality, but it was a happy reminder of just how much fun grocery shopping can be.
The produce section was awesome - great prices and a lot of totally unfamiliar fruits and veggies (I bought a couple to experiment). The woodear mushrooms I picked up have already gone to good use in a wild rice pilaf.
Their general food was also an adventure. There was pretty much an entire aisle of bamboo shoots and pickled ginger. I was unaware that that there were so many options in either of those foods.
The crowning glory is definitely the meat/seafood section. When people say 'fresh fish', they mean, fish tanks with live fish/oysters/clams/snails just waiting for you to eat them. Plus there are lots of heads - fish heads, pig heads. And the best part was watching three women GO AT a box of crabs with these long tongs...flinging the poor little guys into their paper sacks, digging through to find the *Best* ones. Frankly, I was a little (read: a lot) intimidated. I am less adventurous with animal foods than plant food so I did not partake in most of that section, but it's great for a visit, and maybe even a purchase if you want to enter the fray.
In any case, I can pretty much guarantee you'll walk out with something fun. -
Review from Prachee M.
Minneapolis, MN
1/13/2010
The place to go if you have time on your hands, want to explore unfamiliar items, are looking for fresh Asian vegetables. It's one of the few places that I know of that carries head-on shrimp and prawns, both fresh and frozen, and crabs and many other kinds of fish.
Good place for fresh herbs like mint, cilantro, chives, basil, as well as produce such as green papaya, shallots, key limes, eggplant (2-3 kinds), banana-flower, okra, greens of various kinds. They also have a vast selection of noodles including freshly made noodles.Listed in: The Botany of My Desire
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Review from Meghann F.
Minneapolis, MN
9/15/2009
Was looking online for an Asian grocery foods store to get some ingredients for a recipe my friend sent me. This was rated the City's Best from City pages.
Definitely an interesting place, lots of selection of exotic and otherwise fruits and veggies - I wasn't even sure where to look for some of the things that I needed - since I wasn't sure what it even looked like!
Found most things by just wandering the aisles and checking out everything.
HUGE selection of tea - this was awesome.
Also the seafood area - wow - fish on ice all over the place, oysters, mussels, etc. Wish i knew how to shuck the oysters!
Tried some things from their deli - picked up a Bahn Mi sandwich - that was pretty good - and some spring rolls - not bad on those either.
Overall lookin' forward to going back and picking up some other exotic things to experiment with! -
Review from Michael N.
Minneapolis, MN
3/14/2009 1 Check-in Here
This is a pretty good asian food store. The have a decent selection of fresh seafood. I don't really know how to tell if its fresh - luckily my gf does so she does the dirty work of picking out the seafood. Actually she ends up cooking it too so really she does all the work, I just follow along. Their produce section isn't bad and they seem to have most asian grocery staples, whatever those might be.
I'm not a grocery shopper so can't really form my own opinion on it but my parents always go here when they visit, and my gf seems to like it so I would say its a solid place based on that. -
Review from smylee l.
Saint Paul, MN
8/21/2010
I love stopping in here for staples, like Kimchee and Keem (fried seaweed). The price is great. Compared to United Noodles this place is super cheap! I noticed it carries a lot of SE Asian products, and even has a Mexican aisle.
The only bummer here is that there is a limited amount of Korean and Japanese well-known brands. I couldn't find the red bean paste or tofu for Korean stews here. If I could read Thai or Vietnamese, maybe I would have found the right red hot sauce. ;) Ahh well...I still leave feeling good I got a good deal on other stuff. -
Review from Sarah C.
8/31/2010
I like. Does it smell, or am I imagining things? By smell I mean: smell more than an Asian market normally smells? I'm still wigged out by the idea of buying seafood in Minnesota (it's a Maine thing I can't shake yet), but was impressed by the variety.
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Review from Carrie S.
Saint Paul, MN
11/5/2009
This place is off the beaten path of the university Ave. Asian markets but I think it is one of the best ones! I don't cook a lot of asian but their produce looks a lot better than the stuff I find at my local Cub Foods sometimes. I love that they have fresh fish and seafood. This place is BUSY on the weekends so be prepared. I really enjoyed browsing the aisles and seeing familiar, and very unfamiliar, products everywhere I turned.
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Review from LALA T.
Sacramento, CA
2/14/2009
We were visiting family in MN, and bf's mom took us here to buy some food. The store looks small from the outside but inside is filled with so many food items. There's also a jewelry store inside.. We brought back some spicy hmong sausages home, and they were the best hmong sausage i had!!!
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Review from Tom S.
Saint Paul, MN
6/13/2010
After having finally made it over to United Noodle, I now feel confirmed in rating this my favorite grocery store in the Twin Cities. Their produce section is awesome, with a healthy variety of Western staples at jaw-dropping prices (garlic at like 1.49/pound, and better quality than what I get at Kowalski's,) as well as a wide selection of Asian items and some Mexican ones, particularly impressive for greens and root vegetables. The fresh seafood selection is another standout, more options than Coastal Seafoods, and with prices so low as to raise more than a little suspicion, so perhaps it's not for the Whole Foods set, but I've bought fish and shrimp there 5 times now with no quality/freshness issues yet.
I cook mostly Indian food, and I wish their spices and sauces were more diverse, so that I could get some cumin seeds and some kind of curry paste other than Thai green and massaman ones (blech), instead of just 50 varieties of tamarind and shrimp paste. That isn't what kind of store they are though, the packaged food sticks pretty close to the China-Vietnam axis, and they're pretty great for anything within that range. I guess I'll keep having to make the trek out to the hinterlands of Central Ave and Columbia Heights, but for produce and proteins, Dragon Star is first in my mind. -
Review from Detroit M.
Keego Harbor, MI
4/28/2009
As a visitor to Minnesota, I am fully impressed by the Asian food selection. The prices are great, the selection is excellent and I am sold.
Because of Dragon Star, I made my first pho. You can pretty much find 15 different kinds of broths. In addition to asian foods, you can find a small selection of mexican products. -
Review from Jennifer H.
Washington, DC
4/14/2009
Pretty good and fresh seafood.
