New York City Chinatown Supermarkets: New York Supermarket v. Hong Kong Supermarket

Along East Broadway in New York City's Chinatown, there are various stores and markets, selling everything from baked goods to fish balls. I stopped by two of them today to comparison shop.

New York Supermarket
75 East Broadway
New York, NY 10002

Located in a slightly hidden mini-mall directly under the Manhattan Bridge, you have to get past a corridor with small stores that smell of perm solutions (appetizing, no?) to get to the New York Supermarket. Don't worry - the market itself doesn't smell or seem to be contaminated. The fruit section of the market is in a covered, outdoor area, but the vegetables and other food are located inside the store. This supermarket has the usual Chinese fruits - Durian, Persimmons, Kumquats, etc. - and vegetables - bok choy, pea shoots, winter melon, etc. Everything looked pretty fresh. I found scallions at a great price (3 for $1.00)! The space itself is well-lit, but the aisles are a little tight.

Hong Kong Supermarket
109 East Broadway
New York, NY 10002

The Hong Kong Supermarket is the 800 lb. gorilla of Chinatown supermarkets. They have a huge space and a ton of selection. Reviews on the internet of this supermarket are unfairly harsh. People think that this is a dark and dirty spot. I'm not sure what standards they are applying because I find the Hong Kong Supermarket to be brighter and cleaner than most American supermarkets in the city.


Comparison
Interestingly enough, the fruit selection (located outside of the Hong Kong Supermarket) was much bigger and better than the New York Supermarket, but the vegetable section (again, located inside) was not very good. The aisles were bigger than the New York Supermarket, and just because the sheer size of the place, Hong Kong Supermarket has much more selection.

As for prices, I found that noodles (both fresh and dried) were slightly cheaper at New York Supermarket than at Hong Kong Supermarket. However, for other goods, Hong Kong Supermarket served a beat down to New York Supermarket by a wide margin. Here is a quick comparison:

Fresh Lo Mein Noodles ($1.39 at New York Supermarket, $1.49 at Hong Kong Supermarket)
Gold Key Dried Mangoes ($4.99 at New York Supermarket, $3.49 at Hong Kong Supermarket)
Kadoya Sesame Oil ($4.19 at New York Supermarket, $3.99 at Hong Kong Supermarket)
25lb. bag of Golden Crown Brand Jasmine Rice (N/a at New York Supermarket, $14.99 at Hong Kong Supermarket)

As a side note, do you know how difficult it is to carry a 25lb. bag of rice around NYC? It must be like carrying a small child around with you everywhere. Now, I understand the plight of young mothers with their small children on the subway! Except, I would imagine that young mothers can't (or shouldn't!) throw their small children on the ground like I did with my bag of rice.

Note: This blog is in no way affiliated with either of these businesses mentioned in this post. This is the sole opinion of Mystery Ter.

Fresh Bluefish at $2.29 per pound

It's astounding how few varieties of fish most supermarkets carry. I often wonder whether it's really the consumer demands that generated our "over-fishing" problems, or whether it is the lack of demand-generation effort on the part of the retailers to encourage consumers to eat types of fish that are plentiful from our oceans.

On a good day, if you go to a general supermarket in the Boston area (e.g., Stop & Shop, Hannaford, Wholefoods, Shaws, Foodmaster, Roche Brothers), you may find one kind of fish for $5.99 a pound (even cat fish costs this much these days), but most will priced around $8.99 a pound. The varieties are usually limited to salmon, tuna, swordfish, cod, haddock, catfish, tilapia, trout, and your usual New England shellfish. Recently, I've been seeing more swai and pollack as well. But generally these are it. And they're expensive. For convenience sake, sometimes, I'd end up buying fish there, but I usually wait until I have to shop at Kam Man, the large Chinese Supermarket near my home in Quincy. I'm lucky that I live in a very racially diverse enough town where there is such a supermarket.

There are many, many more varieties of fish there at Kam Man that you don't see at other supermarkets. These are usually the plentiful fish and are the bargain items. The salmon is generally not much below prices at other supermarkets.

Most of this fish are very fresh–some (such as tilapia) are even live in tanks. You have to choose a fish, pick it up with a pair of tongs (as pictured above) and put it into a basket and then ask the clerk to clean and cut it for you. For bigger fish such as salmon and grouper and carp, you can get it by the pound, but for smaller fish, you have to pick a whole fish, which they weigh entirely and then cut and clean. Yesterday, I ended buying a 3.25 pound bluefish for $7.42 (@ $2.29 a lb). I had the clerk filet it, keeping the bones in the bag. Each filet will be served as entrées for two (a total of 4 servings), and the bones, head, and tail I plan to keep for fish stock.

My message here is: open your mind to ethnic supermarkets. You're likely to find good quality produce. More on how I prepared the bluefish later.

Scallion Saver

Random tip of the day (week? month? however often I feel like it?):

I like to buy stalks of scallions, and then, to keep them from going bad if I don't use them fast enough, I chop them up, put them into a plastic container and stick it in the freezer. When I need to use them, I just take out the container a few minutes before throwing a handful of them into a dish.

While I realize that scallions are not that expensive (according to Ms. FrugalMeals, they are $0.89 per bunch in Boston, but I find that they are $1.19 in New York City on average), this is not just a money saver, it is a time saver as well.

Similarly, I buy jars of minced garlic so that I don't have to bother with the cloves.

Grocery Budget of $325 a month for 2 people and 2 cats

I'll kick off this blog with my entry. There are two people including myself in my household. I have a monthly budget of $325 (that's only $2 more than the amount of food stamps allowance for a 2-person household in Massachusetts, even though we are not on food stamps), covering groceries and pet food/supplies for our 2 cats. We eat pretty well. I want to show how this can be done.

WRITE DOWN NUMBERS. The biggest trick is logging in your receipts each time you shop. It's amazing how you can stick to your budget just by writing down numbers. I'm a total, complete slob and it took me a while to get used to this, but having a little notepad with you can really help.

GO INTO THE GROCERY STORE WITH A PHYSICAL SHOPPING LIST. The shopping list gives you a guideline to prevent you from impulsively picking up that "sale" item that you really don't need.

COOK MORE THAN ONE MEAL AT A TIME. Make a lot of food and store them in plastic containers.

I think these three are most helpful tricks for me. I will share what I make and how much everything costs as we progress.