Now I know what it feels to be a white person walking around in an Indian store. Us Asians (particularly the first-generation ones) have a habit of remaining completely and utterly silent if we don't know who you are. We'll look you right in the eyes and stay quiet. Stare at you from obscure corners of the building, still watching, waiting...in silence.
Meanwhile, you think either
a) you've committed what's considered a felony in Vietnam,
b) you've walked into a place you're not wanted or in extreme circumstances,
c) you're going to die.
None of them are really true.
This "Asian" silent treatment phenomenon is 99.8% due to a language barrier and .02% cultural/other. The latter might be a result of hostility towards Anglo-Saxons/Europeans because of their good ol' colonial days. And in some Asian countries, you just don't speak unless you have something of value to say.
Onto the pros of this place:
1. For starters, they have my 3-in-1 milky tea with the horrendous English printed on the side of the box. I love my black tea with milk, just like the good ol British colonizers taught my great-grand parents. But since college, I've gotten pretty lazy. It started with boiling the tea in a proper kettle, boiling the milk to accompany the tea and then mixing the two.
Then I started throwing the tea bag in cold water and nuking it in the microwave. Added the milk, then nuked it again.
And now, thanks to Little Saigon, I can dump one packet into hot water and I'm done.
2. They have the fruity lychee jelly candies. I inhale those mothers like nothing else. And at $1.19 for the entire bag, Starburst (Mars Co.) might be a little concerned.
3. They have all the ingredients you need to make Japanese Baked Mussels with the infamous "Dynamite" sauce. I'm not really sure how much of the Yelp community this last point concerns, but nonetheless.
And the cons:
1. There were unidentifiable, disgusting white creatures with frilled gills and furry bottoms packaged up as "MISC" in the meat department.
2. Most items weren't actually where the signs (one-fourthin Filipino, one-fourth in Vietnamese, one-fourth in English, one-fourth crossed out) said they would be.
3. I know I'm of Asian descent, but it sucks when I can't ask a question because no one knows what I'm saying. So be prepared to walk in able to identify the "MISC" from the items on your grocery list.
4. The meat and seafood department looks like 19th century Chicago before the FDA was created in 1906.
Other than that, I'll be headed back for the tea, lychee candy and mussels I really can't find anywhere else.
And maybe someday, if I learn enough Vietnamese, I'll dare ask what "MISC" was before they butchered it and plastic-wrapped it for display on the ice box. read more