I honestly do not make too many foreign types of food, but a friend and I were looking for a rare…read moretype of decaffeinated black tea, and we were hoping that we'd find some at some of the Asian stores in town. Sadly to say, we didn't what we were looking for. It was interesting to look through a bunch of new types of Asian cuisine that I hadn't known about though.
This, and Uni-Mart, seem to have some of the best Asian item selections in Ames. It's not a huge store, though. There are about 4 aisles of items including tons of bulk-bag rice, tea, chocolate treats, soybeans, types of grains, and more. Lots of soy sauce varieties, too. There are also freezers with frozen food. Most of the food doesn't have English written on the packaging, but some of the packaging does have English to give you a general idea of what the item is.
The interior isn't particularly modern, but it is clean. Some interior decorating would probably go a long way, but it's very functional. Some items didn't have prices marked on them, so if I was looking to purchase those items, I'd probably be pretty frustrated. Judging by the price tags, it looks like they may offer a discount if you pay with cash instead of credit cards.
Some of the odder items I found included duck eggs, neat Cheetos packaging, and lots of varieties of rice that I've never seen before. It's definitely neat.
They didn't have the tea that we wanted. In fact, I was a little disappointed by the tea selection; there are definitely much, much larger tea selections at all of the local grocery stores. I ended up purchasing some treats. The cashier wasn't particularly friendly, but she was very proficient and wasn't rude at all.
Final thoughts: Definitely a neat store, and I'm glad that Ames has some Asian food stores to get some of the harder-to-find items in-town. It isn't the most modern-looking store, and it doesn't have a huge selection, but if you have a favorite foreign food brand and can't find it in the regular grocery stores, you might be able to find it here.
