A few weeks ago we discovered the MT Supermarket in Austin. It's a huge Asian grocery store up on north Lamar at Kramer with food from Vietnam, China, Indonesia, Japan and the Phillipines. We'd been to Asian markets in London, but this one, seemed amazingly exotic. Maybe our senses have been a bit dulled by almost three years in Texas.
The store was at least as big as a large Target, and was doing a good business on a Saturday afternoon. I had not realized there was so much demand for Asian products in central Texas. The rice section alone was huge with burlap sacks of rice in dozens of varieties piled up four feet high on pallets. The produce section had several items we'd never seen before and the catfish and lobster tanks kept Fred enthralled. When I first moved to London I used to love the feeling of being almost lost in unusual or alien circumstances, like walking around Southall or Hounslow, or even just old-style London street markets. But it's been a long time since I felt that wonderful disorientation. So many items in this place had no English labels on them; and we kept picking up items --mushrooms? tiny fish? dried peppers?-- and trying to guess what they were.
Here's some of what we brought home:
The store was at least as big as a large Target, and was doing a good business on a Saturday afternoon. I had not realized there was so much demand for Asian products in central Texas. The rice section alone was huge with burlap sacks of rice in dozens of varieties piled up four feet high on pallets. The produce section had several items we'd never seen before and the catfish and lobster tanks kept Fred enthralled. When I first moved to London I used to love the feeling of being almost lost in unusual or alien circumstances, like walking around Southall or Hounslow, or even just old-style London street markets. But it's been a long time since I felt that wonderful disorientation. So many items in this place had no English labels on them; and we kept picking up items --mushrooms? tiny fish? dried peppers?-- and trying to guess what they were.
Here's some of what we brought home:
Dragon Fruit, which has to be the most beautiful fruit, but we didn't like the taste.
Instant miso soup which we've not tried yet.
And who can resist Hello Panda cookies?
The other nice surprise was the housewares sections. Rows and rows of dishes, saucepans, steamers and other items. We had been looking for tea and coffee mugs like the ones we used to buy in England. It sounds easy enough but Phil has definite prejudices. The mugs have to be of nice china or porcelain, and they can't be too big. (The rest of us love the huge Starbucks mugs with world cities on them. We could have had London, Austin, Dallas, and San Francisco after last summer's vacation but Phil vetoed them because they are too big.)
But MT Supermarket had a great selection. They are a little thick but have amusing lids and built in tea strainers.
Previously we had a small collection of mugs decorated with cats and others with dinosaurs. Maybe we'll just move to dragons.
1 comments:
I spent about 10 minutes trying to figure out why you would want a coffee cup with holes in it.....now I get it. And now I want one. What a great find.
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