I live in a large and famously expensive city and I love to eat good food. The "food" category of my budget is the item I struggle with the most. If this resonates with you, dear reader, you absolutely need to make yourself a regular at your local Chinatown (or local Chinese grocery store).
Why?
Because Chinatown is where all the best deals are. I spend an average of $20-25 a week to feed a single person (myself) eating exclusively groceries I purchased from Chinatown and cooking every meal at home. And I'm not just filling my body with instant ramen every day, I'm eating a well-balanced diet of rice, vegetables, and a little bit of meat. For comparison, my friend who shops frugally at a Western grocery store spends $50-75 a week for one person.
Here are some highlights from various trips I've made to Chinatown over the past month:
- Cherries - $1 / pound in Chinatown; cost $6 / pound the same weekend at Costco.
- Strawberries - $1 / pound; cost $4 / pound the same weekend at Trader Joes.
- Broccoli - $0.49 / pound. This was a deal I spotted today. Guess who is going to be eating broccoli this week. :)
- Chicken legs - $1 / pound. This isn't some super once-in-a-blue-moon kind of deal, I see chicken legs at this price point regularly at Chinatown in one of the most expensive cities in the country.
- Ground pork - $1 / pound. Sometimes the price gets as low as $0.79 / pound.
- Bok choy - generally between $0.75 - $1 / pound. Trader Joes charged $3 each last time I checked.
- Napa cabbage, Daikon radish - generally around $1 / pound. No price comparison because these aren't generally sold in American stores.
- Other Asian vegetables - generally range from $0.75 - $2 / pound, but prices vary.
Here are some tips to navigating your local Chinatown like a pro:
- Misconception: you need to speak Chinese in order to shop in Chinatown. While it is true that the shoppers and the staff around you will likely not be speaking English, you will get by just fine even if you don't know any Mandarin. In fact, many shoppers and staff will not be speaking Mandarin - they will be speaking their own local dialect of Chinese. The labels on food will likely not be in English (or if they are, they will be translated strangely), but you'll be fine unless you suddenly forget what a watermelon looks like. In my experience, prices for individual items are always in English and you will be able to read the total based on what's on the cash register.
- Go early. The food (with the exception of meat) is generally not refrigerated and sits out in the hot sun all day right next to the street. As a result, by the end of the day, the food might look a little limp and picked over... so go as early as possible.
- Bring cash. Many stores will not accept credit cards (though many will accept SNAP).
- Be prepared to shop around. You know how sometimes when you look at flights to a certain destination, it costs X amount and then when you check back a few hours later the price is completely different? Well, Chinatown is the human version of flight pricing. A worker at one shop will be sent to go look at the prices of, say, gailan at all of the neighboring shops and then they will attempt to undercut all of their neighbors by 5 to 10 cents. And then a worker at a neighboring shop B will notice that everyone is buying gailan at shop A, and cut their prices as well. And so on and so forth, until the prices get too low and the shops raise their prices again. If you want to see this in action, go the day before all of the trucks arrive with new groceries - for me, that's usually a Thursday or Friday.
- Finally and most importantly: when in doubt, do what your local Asian auntie does. Find the person with the wide-brimmed sports visor who is inexplicably wearing three jackets even though it's 80 degrees Fahrenheit outside and copy them. See a sea of Asian aunties around a store? Join them, and buy what they buy.
Just as a heads up - this shopping experience differs somewhat from shopping in your local Asian grocery store, so let me know if you are interested in hearing more about that.
Source: have been shopping at Asian grocery stores since I was a kid.
June 12, 2022 at 12:49AM
