On Tuesday I posted a quick review of takeout lunch from Saigon Deli in Burnsville. The restaurant, as I noted then, is attached to the larger Saigon Market. When we got to Minnesota the market used to be in Eagan, right off Cedar Avenue and we shopped there often—mostly for whole fish and ataulfo mangoes. Some years ago they moved a few miles west to their current location on Highway 13 in Burnsville. That location took a while to open and after a few thwarted attempts to shop there in the early going I lost track of them. This was a mistake. As I discovered when I stopped in a week ago, the store is much larger than the previous incarnation and more fully stocked with a lot more than just Vietnamese ingredients. And, of course, it helps that their restaurant makes very good food as well. Continue reading →

I’ve posted a number of write-ups of outdoor and covered markets in Minnesota (Hmongtown Marketplace and Hmong Village), Montreal (Jean-Talon) and London (Borough Market). I’ll have more of these as the opportunity arises (there’ll be another from London soon enough). However, in 2018 I’ll have a far more regular series of write-ups of formal markets/grocery stores that cater to various immigrant communities in the Twin Cities metro area. I’ve already posted one of these—a quick look at Andale Mercado in Richfield. Here now is a look at the Shuang Hur mothership on University Avenue in St. Paul, one of the mainstays of the Southeast Asian scene. I’d call it a quick look—it’s light on text—but there are rather a lot of images. The main goal of this series of posts is to give people who’ve not shopped in these markets a decent sense of what’s available there and hopefully give them a reason or two to go. Hence the maximalist approach to images.  Continue reading →