After we had Dim Sum we walked into Shun Fat Supermarket to check it out to see what it was like. I know a lot of you guys haven’t been inside hardcore Asian markets before and there are so many wonderful delightful things.
Shun Fat Supermarket
421 N. Atlantic Blvd
Monterey Park, CA 91754
(626) 308-3998
http://www.shunfatsupermarket.com/
The first place we hit was the produce department. In the produce department we found all kinds of things you can’t normally find at a regular grocery store. We found 3 different kinds of asian pears. Shannon said one of them is called the green pear it looks like what I consider a regular asian pear except it is even more ginormous and it was dark brown. We found things you would normally get to find like chili paste and we also bought almond cookies.
And then along the way we also found things that I had just never seen before. We picked up a bottle of fish sauce which is real common in Vietnamese and specifically Thai food. Fish sauce is a concentrated anchovy and water mix with a little bit of salt and possibly a little bit of sugar depending on which one you get. It doesn’t taste as horrible as you would imagine and in fact with the right thing it is absolutely amazing.
We walked down the tea aisle. I wanted Shannon to get to try some really expensive green tea. What was funny is a little man approached us and started telling us about how he comes from a long line of oriental healers and he studied all the big books even though the only degree he could get was mathematics in the U.S. He couldn’t get a doctor degree because of the language. He spoke very broken English. He started taking us through the teas and telling us which teas were good for this and good for that. One tea was good for handling an infection, another tea is good for women when it is that time of the month, other teas are for being more pretty. So, we ended up walking out with a big armful of different teas. The amazing thing is if we had been at Whole Foods buying a thing of green tea could cost $5-$10. Here a box of green tea was a $1.39. I think there was even one tea that was $0.79.
We walked out of the place with a huge grocery basket full of amazing interesting and unique things and we ended up spending $50 for it. Prices were cheaper than they would be at a Trader Joe’s.
