If you missed the customer's related review about our store lately and the article published
on Mail Tribune's blog by Sarah Lemons posted on March 23, 2010, so here’s a repost for it:
For the past 20 years, the local standard-bearer
for specialty Asian ingredients has been Asia Grocery Market in a tiny strip mall clinging to Medford’s Winco shopping
plaza.
Now there’s
a new kid in town. Taste of the Orient opened late last year at The Shoppes at Exit 24. Housed in a sparkling-clean, expansive storefront, this market likely will
appeal to customers put off by the Medford business’s higgledy-piggledy jumble of goods in a location that shows (and
smells like) its age.
Guided by a co-worker’s tip, I stopped by
Taste of the Orient over the weekend to have a look around. I wasn’t in the market for a specific food but decided to
browse, bearing in mind some recipes from a Pan-Asian cookbook my mom had given me.
Whereas a trip to Asia Grocery Market
is like a treasure hunt in a musty cave, Taste of the Orient displays its products in neat rows on pristine shelving or in
impeccably maintained freezer cases. The effect is actually a little sparse, but the co-owner said he and his wife are bringing
in more and more items based on customer requests. Hours are 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekends.
There’s
the usual suspects found in any Asian market: seaweed sheets and rice for authentic sushi, as well as the Kewpie brand mayonnaise
typical to California rolls. Like Asia Grocery, the freezer cases contain enough dumplings, rolls, buns and noodles to supply
a dim sum palace.
For the more adventurous, there’s balut eggs
and the flesh of odorous durian fruit, albeit packaged in the freezer. I prefer to ogle the spiny, seemingly impenetrable
fruit at Asia Grocery, although I’ve never been brave enough to buy one.
Also peculiar are bags and bags of dried
fish, complementing the frozen specimens of milkfish, which I’d never seen but apparently are essential to Southeast
Asian cuisine. Indeed, the whole store is geared toward that type of cookery in deference to the owners’ Filipino heritage.
Myriad types of sago and tapioca, as well as other refined starches used in desserts from that part of the world take up a
large section inside the store.
More
familiar is the array of flavored rice chips and crackers. I was disappointed that none contained seaweed, but venturing farther
into the store, was overjoyed to find a package of Kameda “age ichiban” rice crackers. I’d periodically
searched for these at Asia Grocery in vain over the past decade, after a Japanese friend shared some in college.
“Ichiban” means “best”
or “No. 1” in Japanese, and I certainly can’t argue with that claim when it comes to these crackers, puffed
and bristling on one side like a hedgehog, indented on the other, their a savory flavor accented with a hint of sweet. The
5.57-ounce package contains about two dozen individually wrapped crackers the size of silver dollars.
Although I try to avoid excess packaging
in my food purchases, I’ll make an exception for these. A small consolation, the packaging does make for portable, single-serving
snacks. They’re $4.99 at Taste of the Orient.
Read more about this here...
