My "regular supermarket" is one of these shops - it's often cheaper than the big supermarket and much closer to where we live. Aside from exploring all the weird things you can eat, like chicken hearts and durian and different vegetables (there is this green called "shanghai", it's nice if you steam it iirc) they're pretty good for ingredients. You can find shaoxing cooking wine in a lot of them which shows up in a few different recipes, even just for stir-fry. There's also a lot of different curry pastes and things. A while back we got some red curry paste but didn't know how to use it properly so we just kind of stuck it on the meat and fried it. This turned out to be exactly the wrong thing to do. Don't do it. It tastes like eating a big bowl of salt. Last week we had it again but prepared properly and it was great.

Back to weird stuff, pretty much all the drinks are strange as hell but stay away from the energy drinks because a lot of them will just make you feel completely awful immediately after you drink them. There was this one drink which I forgot the name of that's kind of full of like solid jelly bits. It's a drink but you chew it, I think it was Japanese. The lychee flavour of that is pretty good. I had a tea egg once as well. It's basically a boiled egg that tastes really strongly of five spice or something. Some of them also sell those steamed pork buns in the frozen foods section. Maybe you can get those in normal supermarkets in America but not here. You don't need a steamer to cook them, we used to just rig a makeshift one out of a pasta strainer over a big pot of boiling water with a pot lid on top. This doesn't work quite as well for steaming vegetables though.

I haven't tried anything really strange like thousand year old egg yet but I'm kind of wondering what can be done with chinese turnip. A lot of the vegetables there are really cheap in general actually and I think it could be pretty cost-effective to learn how to cook with them.

edit: I read somewhere that shaoxing can be used as a beverage. This is easily one of the worst ideas I have had.

There was this one drink which I forgot the name of that's kind of full of like solid jelly bits. It's a drink but you chew it, I think it was Japanese. The lychee flavour of that is pretty good.

This is awful. I've had it from my local asian supermarket before and it was horrid. I could not get through to the jelly bits because the drink was so bad. So bad.

bubble tea?

no, I assumed everyone knew about bubble tea because it's everywhere these days. i love that shit though.

This is awful. I've had it from my local asian supermarket before and it was horrid. I could not get through to the jelly bits because the drink was so bad. So bad.

I tried the orange flavour which was pretty undrinkable but I swear the lychee one is nice.

Alec I am not talking about bubble tea okay. This is not the same thing. It is a drink that comes in a bottle and it's like the whole thing is all jelly-like rather than the chunks/pearls. I think it said on the side that the inside bits were made of like coconut or something. Bubble tea is also really expensive whereas this was not.

bubble tea is fuckin' gay

If you have the stuff to make it, tell them to make you a proper halo-halo. It's the best dessert ever!

I just asked a guy and he said it was just fruit and ice and sugar so I might ask them but I dunno the galley guys too well but they cook filipeno food for the guys I work with all the time.

btw his name is nick and he just turned 30 and he looks like a 14 year old I am not joking he is tiny as fuck and dances infront of the helocopters when we're landing them I'm going to try to get it on my camera next time we crew change.

it depends who you are. I think most people used to a western diet would find mochi disgusting just because of the texture. these were pre-packaged things tho, not like the nice pretty ones on google images

that smiling orange drink I mentioned is actually Salted Mandarin flavor and has 460 mg sodium I'm going to drink tomorrow

don't get Cane Sugar drink

also FYI people, most of this stuff is cheap for a reason. eg the Mr. Brown coffee I get had an instant variety that, in 2008, was found to be contaminated with melamine. stay safe!! with packaged items, only buy the ones with ingredients in english. listen for food recalls

Gimme dem tipz.

I don't know how much you know/where you live in the city but there are three major asian supermarkets that I know of. this is Earl Chip posting by the way.

the first is called Asia Supermarket and is on the west end of chinatown (11th and race), close to a lot of things in center city. there's only a small entrance on the street, and you immediately head down the stairs into a basement, kinda like dick blick if you've ever been there. they have a lot of dried fruits and mushrooms and stuff like that, plus cheap kitchenware, candy, packaged meals, drinks, and fresh stuff like weird vegetables and squids. I like this one a lot, and I usually stop in if I'm in center city. for bread and pastries I would stop in one of the bakeries on race or anywhere in chinatown

the next is in south philly (1111 s6th street and Washington Ave), First Oriental Market. it's a lot bigger than Asia Supermarket and they have a frickin huge selection but you have to be careful what you buy, they sell a lot of items that aren't sealed. it's also pretty out of the way unless you're from south philly. iirc there's a pho restaurant next door so that's cool, I'd eat there.

the last one I know of is on spring garden st, called Spring Garden Market I think. I've never been there, but I've heard it's more upscale than the others. might not be all asian food.

there are others like Chung May in chinatown and a asia supermarket in upper darby, but I don't know anyone who has been there and they mostly have bad reviews.

Thanks, I'm going to have to check some of those out the next time I go into the city.

there are a lot of things you should pick up just to try like Mr. Brown coffee. actually there's too much to talk about so I'll just say don't get mochi it's disgusting.

isn't Mr. Brown coffee one of the things that was tainted with melamine like a year ago. I'm not kidding

also I got these dumpling-looking things once thinking they'd be more like the dumplings from chinese restaurant but instead they were just really thick disgusting shell with like 1 mg of meat inside. And like I'm pretty sure they literally had lard in them

but yeah I'm currently liking the store nearby though (not HMart) because I'm poor and need cheap noodles and this place has like all this weird shit other than Maruchan, I guess it's all Indian brands but they have Chinese noodles too and some Indian kind I've never heard of before. Some of them even have like, real fucking food in the ingredients. Like, whole wheat, carrots, peas, wtf. It was also cool because there was a whole shelf devoted to little noodles in the packet but there were so many flavors I could've bought one of each and had enough for a considerably long time and could've had a new flavor each time instead of BEEF FLAVOR CHICKEN FLAVOR

also bubble tea is ok but Thai Tea is superior

also yeah I never thought of it that way, probably a lot of the pleasure of going there is because it literally makes me feel like a kid again. Pretty much everything was brand new first time I went, aside from like RICE etc. It's funny the kind of flavors they can market over there for drinks but I guess they can't get Americans into it. I wonder if they've done focus groups with GRASS JELLY DRINK etc. It's not even like when you go there at least now you're an adult and open to new food, like proportionally probably as much stuff is terrifying as when you were a kid. I mean some of it is reasonable and like just not Western tastes, so you're up to trying it at least once, but some stuff literally makes me squeamish like fish eyes etc.

Edit: Back when I had money I tried pretty much everything I could. This place does seem to be about 50% Indian food, I love samosas and shit like that. And uh, chicken biryani I think. Those indian meals in the foil bag are pretty reasonable too. I can't remember any names of those sorry. It's also cool they don't pussy out and even those cheap maruchan-looking noodles are spicy as fuck. Also anybody have a place with green tea ice cream? I think it's like the best flavor of ice cream ever but everyone else is like repulsed by it somehow. I mean it's not like drinking frozen green tea, it's like COFFEE ice cream is a lot sweeter than coffee, and seems sort of different somehow aside from that

yeah only bad thing is it is sort of hit or miss, like if you're getting a thing just deciding which brand to get. I got this kind of sauce, I think it was supposed to be hot chili garlic sauce or something and I think they literally just threw some ketchup in there. Like SALTY ketchup salty is not hot

they also have japaness food but it's mostly 99% just stupid candies and stuff, like hello kitty gummy candies or something it probably sells though, like the japfags probably go for it. Would be cool if they had real food from Japan though. On second though they might have tofu and stuff. They really take the ASIAN thing very literally there was this other stuff that was some kind of hazelnut brownie sort of thing from Turkey, maybe it was made of ground up beans or something too. And it came in chocolate flavor etc. It might've been this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halva so yeah I was thinking sesame seeds I guess, not beans

Might be something like nata de coco
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nata_de_coco

Yes! That's the stuff. But it wasn't in cubes like that, it was kind of like mashed up with a bit of liquid into some kind of drink.

Also anybody have a place with green tea ice cream? I think it's like the best flavor of ice cream ever but everyone else is like repulsed by it somehow. I mean it's not like drinking frozen green tea, it's like COFFEE ice cream is a lot sweeter than coffee, and seems sort of different somehow aside from that

I have had this before also and agree it is excellent. I think if I found any though it would be far too expensive, even in a week where I had a lot of money. Last time we tried to buy an unfamiliar brand of ice cream the guy at the counter was like "that will be twenty dollars thank you" and we had to put it back.

maxim instant coffee packets are the best

So I just got back from HMart a couple minutes ago and for the most part, the stuff I picked up was pretty mundane (in uh, Asian grocery store terms). I got a lot of beans, chickpeas, and dumplings. I did pick up a few weird things that look pretty neat though. I got three snacks, some sort of honey barbecue fish cheetoh that is pretty good, a bag of those doughy shrimp disks that you sort of associate with Korean junk food, and this completely bizarre bag of uh, what looks like crushed, dried chickpeas. I have no idea what they are and I picked them up because it looked like the foulest snack they had. The bag has two dead, dried squids on it and their tendrils go all over the bag. It looks disgusting and I honestly cannot tell what this actually is, but it's really good. They're these little cracker (maybe?) balls that have sort of a honey mustard and horseradish taste. There's something semi-sweet inside them but I can't tell what it is.

I also picked up some noodles and fish balls that I'm going to use to make a soup tonight. Other than that, the stuff I got is pretty uninteresting (five different varieties of ramen, that cinnamon drink, maybe a few other things??). Oh yeah, and I got the durian too. Pretty p.u.m.p.e.d. to try that. It was a lot more inexpensive than I thought it would be ($1.59 a pound!!)

Also Biggles, I've had that jelly drink before and the little bits of gel are aloe. I think it's pretty good.