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While it's easy to get overwhelmed in a store with one of the city's largest collection of seafood tanks containing
live eels, crabs and lobsters, the Chinatown Food Market (202 Grand Boulevard, north of the City Market) is a great place to
satisfy your cravings for adventurous snacks.
The aisles of the small grocery store are slim and packed with goods from around Asia. It's here that you can find fresh Thai basil and bok choy and cans of coconut milk and peruse an entire aisle devoted to tea with dozens of oolong and jasmine varieties.
The impulse items at the register range from comically oversized Chupa Chupa lollipops to freshly baked baguettes -- just begging to be turned into Banh Mi. But the entrance to the store leads immediately to Aisle 1 -- a collection of chips, candy and other treats.
Here are a few:
Wei-chun Pork and Chinese Spinach Dumplings ($3.99). You'll get between 25 and 30 per package of these potstickers, which you can boil or pan fry. The challenge is to stop eating them halfway through the bag. The two aisles of frozen foods have a large variety of dumplings and shumai -- both meat and vegetarian. Wei-Chun USA is based out of Los Angeles, which means it has to follow United States food safety standards (for better or for worse).
The dumplings are ready in about 10 minutes and require very little effort. The key is to continually add cold water each time the pot gets to a boil and to gently stir the water with a wooden spoon to keep the dumplings from sticking to the metal.
To make an easy dipping sauce, pick up some soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, sesame oil, brown sugar, fresh ginger and Sriracha.
Mikawaya Green Tea Mochi Ice Cream ($5.49). Put away your bowls. Ice cream will henceforth be eaten with your fingers. Mochi is a rice cake made of sticky rice, which can then be pounded into a fine skin and filled with a paste or ice cream to make a dessert.
Five flavors from Mikaya are available at Chinatown: green tea, vanilla, chocolate, kona coffee and strawberry. The outside is lightly dusted with rice flour, which keeps the skin from getting stuck on your fingers. Inside is a cold, slightly sweet green tea ice cream that is rich and smooth. These are chewy and satisfying, both for the texture and taste. This is the best frozen mochi ice cream I've found in the city.
Jack n' Jill Sweet Chili Potato Chips ($0.99). These rippled chips from the Phillipines (at right above) are exactly as advertised. They have the addictive heat of sweet chili without the chemical aftertaste of a flavor powder. This is a bag of chips that could make a lunch of cold cuts exciting. I'm admittedly a sucker for rippled chips -- like folded pasta, they seem to hold coatings or toppings better than flat chips. With McDonald's introducing a
sweet chili dipping sauce for McNuggets, I hope this is a flavor that catches on in the U.S.
Green Day Durian Chips ($1.99). These chips from Thailand (at left above), are not for the easily discouraged.
Durian is the stinky fruit that's revered or reviled depending on where you grew up and the sensitivity of your palate. It's a fruit I've only smelled and never eaten until now.
The chips have the consistency of dried fruit and the characteristic smell of sweat socks. The taste is that of onions cooked with sweet apricots. There is too much going on in my mouth at once and it's hard not to spit these chips out. The second and third chips are slightly more palatable, but these never cross over into the arena of something I'd enjoy eating.
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