Amuse Bouche: H Mart round up

After following the Chow thread for the past 8 months like a slave the day finally came when the H Mart opened in Burlington. I wanted to wait some time before the sure to be mob size crowds disappeared before venturing in for a visit.

Anyone who knows me realises I have a serious obsession with scouring new food stores. Whenever I travel, be it to Maine, the UK or just to a new town I love to hit the local supermarket and scour the aisles for unique or local ingredients. It's a cheaper and safer habit than say gun running or yacht racing. I've been to most of the local Asian markets; Super 88 (Allston and Boston), Jin Mi Co in Newton, the short lived Asian market on Waverley Oaks in Waltham, Kam Man in Quincy, and a sprinkling of small ones in Burlington, Revere and downtown Boston. I do my homework before I go so I know how to spot the labels of the products I want since many times finding someone who can, or is willing, to speak English is a challenge. I cook from many cuisines including Vietnamese, Korean, Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Indian with a smattering of Malay thrown in for good measure so knowing the product labels in these supermarts is a necessity.

Most of the larger markets will group things together by country and H Mart is no exception. Take for instance the soy sauce aisle. As you wander from one end to the other you will see soy sourced from China, Korea, Japan, etc. The Noodle aisle is segmented into ramen style, rice, sweet potato, etc. And generally as well the parent company's company of origin often dictates which cuisine will reign on the shelves. Both H Mart and Kam Man are owned by Korean based companies. With that intro set we are now off to shop!

You enter through the food court and produce section surrounded my mountains of 25 and 50 pd sacks of rice. My biggest initial disappointment was the food court. 1 Indian, 1 Chinese, 1 Japanese and 1 Korean. I'm sure if you were in the mood for any of those cuisines it would have been welcome, but I really have been craving a Banh Mi and that was not happening here. I also miss the roasted ducks and pig products that you can order at Kam Man and I can never leave without a half duck. Traveling on to the large produce section I realised quickly that this is not one of their strong points. The shallots were all sprouting, the bok choy was wilted, the potatoes were full of sprouts. There were almost no Thai or Viet ingredients at all. No fish mint, no kaffir leaves - in fact Russo's has a much better selection of unique Asian herbs and produce, but they did have lovely packages of Shiso (perilla) leaves. No matter, I found a few things I needed like long leeks and long red peppers and made my way to the next section.

Holy mother of the pickled! One entire corner is filled with Kimchi of every kind and type, with oyster, with scallion, young radish, fresh, aged - you name it. There is a center square with barrels and samples that they will scoop and pack for you. There were pickled tiny crabs, pickled garlic, sautéed dried shrimp, pickled whole baby radish, pickled whitebait, pickled sliced squid and on and on and on.

This section leads on to the meat - frozen goods and fish sections. One case is full of pre-marinated thinly sliced Berkshire pork butt and belly, bone off short ribs, rib eye, chicken boobs, chicken thighs, etc. I picked up some of the rib eye and pork butt for dinner and it was very good for a quick dinner with some steamed sticky rice and a few banchan. Better yet, they had TISSUE PAPER thin slices of beef and pork laid out like card decks on a casino table ready for shabu shabu or pho. Those are headed to the freezer for later.

The fish department is not half as elaborate as the ones at super 88, but it had a suitable selection of ready to cut and an enormous case of already cut ready to go fish including cod heads. Great to remember when I want to make fumet.

One thing I felt about this entire section of meat and fish is that everything was incredibly fresh, well packaged and labeled, well presented, etc. So many Americans are generally shocked at the usual Asian market meat counters, this one is as clean and organized as any large US market.

Off this long wall are the individual aisles of dry goods. I hit the noodle aisle because I needed 10 lbs of noodles for upcoming Thai classes. I walked down the aisle and was faced with an enormous empty square patch of shelf right at eye level. I'm sure you can guess what kind of noodles formerly resided here. I would be out of luck until 'tomorrow' according to the gentleman restocking. I filled up the cart with banh trang wrappers and some vermicelli and headed to the next row. In the aisle of just dried seaweed/laver products I scooped up packages of nori wrappers for sushi class and marveled and the umpteen variations on seaweed you could eat, strips, sheets, wasabi flavoured, even coloured(!) ones in pink and yellow. Eat your weeds! Adjacent to the seaweed section was also a nice selection of katsuobushi if you're looking to make dashi anytime soon. As I wandered up and down the aisles I noticed it was also nice that the store was so new, all of the product on the shelves was dust free and recent. You never wondered how long anything had been kicking around on the shelves.

Just past the frozen dumpling and fish cake freezers I grabbed a pack of frozen rice sticks and noticed that they seem to have set up a few endcaps for the American audience to find their basic staples. One was full of Sriracha and chili sauce, prepared sauces to make ma po dofu, pad thai, la choy products etc. They must have tired of all answering all the questions.

Are you looking for Korean chili paste? This place has the mother lode. They had huge and I mean huge 5 pound containers! of gochujang. I picked up a more moderate sized tub, but holy cow, if you want mouth fire this is the place to go.

There is 1 aisle of perfunctory canned items from the states and a small toiletries aisle. The last aisle has a decent selection of dishes, cooking vessels and electronic cooking items like rice cookers, electric kettles, etc. I looked at the Zojirushi 10 cup induction rice cooker like mine just for price comparison an as you would expect Amazon has a much better price (about $70.00 less) but you can't beat the selection for determining which model you want to buy. There must have been around 15 or 20 different ones to choose from.

I will certainly be back here for the meat, the kimchi aisle and maybe some of those fish heads, but sadly when I crave a Banh mi and heavenly roasted duck I'll still be heading the other way on 128 to Kam Man.

Comments

Great round-up of the new H Mart! Though I was most intrigued by your recommendations for Banh Mi! I was so sad when the Super 88 on Harrison stopped selling them.

Posted by: Julia | January 09, 2010 at 09:40 PM

I've tried the yakisoba (too many onions!!!) and kimchi fried rice (nice and spicy, but not enough kimchi) at the food court. The bakery is rather nice, but I'm totally with you on the produce...

Posted by: Janet | January 11, 2010 at 12:52 PM

Hi Jo! It's been a while since I've visited here. Glad you commented.

Posted by: tut-tut | January 26, 2010 at 10:16 AM