Feature
Top 10 Asian Grocery Shopping Destinations in Metro Atlanta
The current financial crisis have made an impact on everyone’s daily expenses and grocery shopping habits. Shoppers are looking for value and better prices in their grocery expenditures. This year’s GAT list are selected on the basis of quality, value, prices, and services.
By Andrian Putra Posted Dec 1, 2008
Assi Supermarket
1291 Old Peachtree Road, NW, Suwanee, GA 30024 / 770.813.1500
Assi Supermarket has a solid reputation for quality and prices. Its vegetables and fruits section are fresh and packed with seasonal offerings. It also offer a seafood, meat and poultry department. It is known to carry a wide variety of fresh seafood catering to Asian consumers. As for dry food items such as noodles and sauces, Assi’s own house brand are worth trying as they are of superior quality. Average prices of items on the shelves are lower than other supermarkets.
Assi offers about seven eateries at its food court offering Korean and Japanese cooking. This store is clean and easy to navigate. Assi management is planning to open a second store at the former Wal-Mart location on Pleasant Hill Road in 2009.
Plus: Clean and bright environment. Low prices.
Minus: Pesty church volunteers distributing flyers at the exit.
Atlanta Farmers Market
4166 Buford Highway, Atlanta, GA 30345 / 404.325.3999
A popular destination for Vietnamese and Chinese shoppers but it also caters to large Latino shoppers living on Buford Highway. Earned its reputation for its fresh meat and seafood department. A wide variety of vegetables, herbs, and spices used in Southeast Asian cooking are available in this store.
Plus: Fresh meat department. Have variety choices of cuts caters to Asian cooking.
Minus: Limited parking on the weekends.
Buford Highway Farmers Market
5600 Buford Highway, NE, Doraville, GA 30040 / 770.455.0625
One of the early pioneer of Asian supermarket in metro Atlanta. It managed to survived the onslaught of new competitors by offering fresh produce, vegetables, fruits, seafood, and meats at reasonable prices. The store also caters to Latino consumers with large selection of Latino goods and produce.
Plus: Reasonable prices and fresh produce.
Minus: Shoppers for Asian goods could get mixup with aisles of Latino items.
Hong Kong Supermarket
5495 Jimmy Carter Blvd, Norcross, GA 30093 / 770.582.6800
Recently opened in Sept 2008, this store has been popular with Vietnamese, Chinese, and Southeast Asian communities. It offers a wide variety of fresh produce especially items essential to ethnic cooking. There is a large seafood and meat department offering fresh variety of seafood including live frogs and fish. It carry a wide selection of dry goods items and condiments unique to Vietnamese and Southeast Asian tastes.
There is a food court offering Chinese, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malaysian, Thai, and Korean cooking.
Plus: Wide selection of Asian goods.
Minus: Store’s large size could create an overwhelming and tiring shopping experience.
Hoa Binh Seafood Market
4897 Buford Highway, Chamblee, GA 30341 / 770.457.3383
A favorite among Vietnamese and Chinese shoppers as the store carry a wide variety of sauces, condiments, dry goods, noodles, and cooking utensils. It has a small produce section and a seafood counter. The store also has a corner selling freshly made BBQ meat, roast chicken & duck, and crispy suckling pig.
Plus: Wide selections.
Minus: Beware of expired and dated items. Pungent aroma in the store.
Ming’s Food
5697 New Peachtree Road, Atlanta GA / Tel (770) 457-3883
A great bargain destination as Ming’s Food is a wholesaler of Asian and Chinese foods items. You are essentially paying wholesale prices for your goods. A small and limited offering of fresh produce along with basic essentials of sauces and dry goods. This is a hidden gem for those who wanted to save money.
Do not forget to pick up freshly made Soy Milk and Soy Custard (Tow Foo Fa) when you stop here.
Plus: Cheap and fresh.
Minus: Limited offerings.
Oriental Market
5091 Buford Highway, Atlanta, GA 30340 / 770.457.5666
This store carry a variety of canned goods, dried food, spices, and sauces for Thai and Southeast Asian cooking. Its frozen section offers hard to find ethnic vegetables, herbs, and desserts from Thailand. Operated by a Thai couple, this store stocked hard to find ethnic items and spices.
Plus: Hard to find spices and dry goods.
Minus: Limited selection.
99 Ranch Market
5150 Buford Highway, Doraville, GA 30340 / 770.458.8899
A good place to find anything related to Chinese cooking. This place is a favorite shopping venue for Chinese immigrants. Ranch 99 Market offers wide variety of dry goods, snacks, teas, sauces for Chinese cooking. It also offer a fresh seafood and meat department.
Their slow checkout service has much improved since last year’s review. The pungent stinky smell has been eradicated since last review. You may expect a much cleaner shopping experience.
Plus: Low prices with large selection of Chinese cooking items.
Minus: Parking space is tight on the weekends. Checkout counter gets slow during peak business hours.
Dinho Market
5379 New Peachtree Road, Chamblee, GA 30341 / 770.452.6907
A popular shopping for mainland Chinese immigrants. This store offers canned goods, sauces, condiments, and utensils used in Chinese cooking. It has a popular bulletin board for posting job notices and classifieds for Chinese immigrants. It also has a counter selling traditional Chinese medicine and wines.
Plus: Good selection of sauces and condiments.
Minus: Pungent aroma in the store.
Super H Mart
2550 Pleasant Hill Road, Duluth, GA 30096 / Tel 678.543.4000
6335 Hwy 85, Riverdale, GA 30274 / Tel 678.435.0909
10820 Abbotts Bridge Road, Johns Creek, GA 30005 / Tel 678.317.0240
2700 Lawrenceville Suwanee Rd, NE, Suwanee, GA 30024 / Tel 770.932.9511
Super H Mart carry a wide variety of Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Southeast Asian collection of sauces, spices, and condiments, and noodles. Widely reputable for its fresh and reasonably priced seafood department -- Super H Mart also carry a wide array of fresh meat, produce, and fruits. Its stores has large daily sales turnover and therefore kept fresh inventories.
This Korean supermarket chain have been growing leaps and bound and is expecting to open its fifth store in Doraville by early 2009. Due to its extensive growth for the past years, quality and services have suffered. Prices on the same item would varied pending on the store locations. It has been neglecting demands of non-Korean Asian shoppers as new competitors are slowly chipping into its market share.
Plus: Accessible location, clean and bright stores.
Minus: Limited selection on non-Korean Asian items. Prices varied pending on locations.
Worth Mentions:
DeKalb Farmers Market
3000 E. Ponce De Leon Avenue, Decatur, GA 30030 / 404.377.6400
Widely known for its fresh seafood, pastry, cheese, and fresh produce. It used to carry a wide variety of Asian products but it has evolved to much more mainstream shopping. Still an ideal place to shop for fresh seafood and ethnic vegetables.
Plus: Fresh and cheap.
Minus: Limited Asian goods.
Tomato Japanese Grocery
2086 Cobb Parkway, Smyrna, GA 30080 Tel 770-933-0108
7214 Peachtree Industrial Blvd. Norcross, GA 30071 Tel 770-263-7838
A tiny supermarket with no signage leading to the store in Norcross. Look for Sushi Yoko restaurant adjacent to it. Sells fresh sashimi grade fish, frozen Japanese food, rice, sauces, and dry goods from Japan. Japanese expatriates throng this place for ethnic ingredients.
Plus: Ethnic Japanese selections.
Minus: Hard to find store.
Manila Mart
6135 Peachtree Parkway, Norcross GA 30092 / Tel 770.451.4585
This ethnic supermarket caters to the local Filipino community. Offer essential items loved by Pinoys from Goldilock baked goods to ice creams.
Plus: Carry hard-to-find Filipino essentials.
Minus: Limited selection.
Patel Brothers
763 DeKalb Industrial Way, Decatur, GA 30033
Caters to Indian community with a large selection of snacks, frozen sections, rice, spices, teas, and condiments. This store carry wide variety including dry chickpeas, condiments, to frozen roti parathas. It also has a snack corner offering Indian munchies such as murukus to spicy chick peas.
Plus: Low prices and wide selection.
Minus: Crowded on weekend and difficult to navigate.