I know I’d said post this week’s Twin Cities report on Wednesday, as usual—what can I say, things got a little complicated/busy midweek. Anyway, Friday is the new Wednesday and here it is: a look not at a restaurant meal, but at an Asian grocery store. Specifically, it’s a look at Shuang Hur’s flagship location on University Avenue in St. Paul.

This is my second report on this location of Shuang Hur. It was one of the very first stores I reported on when I began to feature Twin Cities immigrant groceries on the blog. That was back in mid-2018. Back then we shopped at Shuang Hur quite often, stopping in particularly for whole fish and greens. As our awareness of the larger Twin Cities’ Asian grocery scene grew, our custom got spread around a fair bit, and so it was after a gap of some years that we returned to Shuang Hur in September.

Just over two years ago, I was interviewed for an article in the Star-Tribune‘s business section on Asian groceries in the Twin Cities metro. Predictably, very little of the long conversation I had with the reporter made it into the piece. One of the things we’d discussed was the absence in the Twin Cities of H Mart, the Korean behemoth that dominates the East Asian grocery scene in most parts of the US with large Asian populations. I had noted to the reporter that having moved to Minnesota from Colorado, where there was a H Mart (then called Han Ah Reum) in a Denver suburb, we had first keenly felt its lack in the Twin Cities. However, I went on to note, we had eventually come to appreciate the metro’s networks of smaller and mid-sized East Asian groceries that cater to an Asian clientele spread around the metro. And the rise of larger stores like Dragon Star and Ha Tien (at their newer location) had even made something approaching one-stop shopping possible for our Indo-Korean family. And, so I said, I no longer wished for a H Mart, preferring to support a wider spread of locally-owned Asian groceries.

Now, of course, H Mart is reportedly finally coming to the Twin Cities, having purchased space in the Midway Marketplace off University Avenue. This is just about a 5-minute drive from Shuang Hur and only a few minutes further from Dragon Star. Shuang Hur and Dragon Star (and several other smaller Asian stores, including Kim’s) have managed to co-exist and thrive for a long time in this general area. But H Mart is a different proposition. Will this be an extinction-level event for at least some of these stores? I hope not but it’s hard to see how the presence of H Mart will not suck business away from the existing stores in its vicinity and potentially even from stores like Ha Tien that are themselves quite large and located much further away. We’ll have to see how it goes, I guess.

In the meantime, a return to Shuang Hur. The market is not hugely different from what it was in my report on it in 2018. That is to say, it still sells pretty much the same mix of products. You still enter through the produce section—filled with greens etc. for almost all the East Asian cookery you might be interested in; the fish-seafood section is still at the end of the produce section, with refrigerated meat cases continuing down that side of the market. The aisles heading to the front are still stocked as they were and you can get a full range of spices, cooking sauces, condiments, vinegars, chilli oils, fish sauces, noodles, rice etc.. The freezer section still contains a large selection of dumplings, seafood and many other things besides. And you can still buy cooking utensils of all kinds.

What’s different is that the store has definitely been spruced up significantly in the intervening years. It’s not like aesthetics were a problem here before but the store is definitely shinier since the remodel and things seem generally more clearly organized and laid out. We bought a fair bit of veg (including a packet of lion’s mane mushrooms at a very low price) and some fish and a few other things. Prices too are as reasonable as they’ve always been.

For a look at the market in its current incarnation, please launch the slideshow below. Scroll down to see what’s coming next.

By the way, the proximate cause for this visit was an email I’d received earlier in the summer from a member of the family that owns the store, letting me know that it had been remodeled. He also mentioned that the Minneapolis location has been significantly remodeled as well (I’d said some rude things about that store in my 2018 report). I have not checked it out yet but if any of my readers have been recently, please do write in below.

I should also say here that I recently discovered that due to some complication with how the mail server connected to my blog email is set up, my emails/replies to people writing to me from Gmail accounts haven’t actually always been getting delivered—there’s some sort of an authentication issue, apparently. My apologies to all who have been writing in from Gmail addresses and feeling completely ignored. As I’ve not been able to solve this “sending to Gmail” issue, I am going to change my blog email soon to a Gmail account.

Alright, next up: another restaurant report from Seoul. That’ll go up tomorrow.