Category Archives: Food

At least not at H-Mart, the new Asian grocery store in Burlington, Massachusetts. Of course, that’s what we did, and it was actually a lot of fun. Crazy with crowds, and attracting so many people, they have police stationed in the parking lot, H-Mart opened in late September and if yesterday’s throngs were any indication, it’s a huge success. With 40 stores located all over the country, H-Mart is capitalizing on what they see as a growing and broad-based appeal of ethnically Asian foods.

The store is enormous, with an entire aisle just for noodles, a kimchi bar, a Korean bakery, and a food court offering the korean goodies we can’t typically find around here. (We had mixed feelings about some of the food court offerings–the dukbokgi was a bit too chewy and the Pa Jun was terrible. But our son loved the dumplings, my husband had some decent Indian food. and I loved a baguette from the bakery.)

The whole experience can be a little overwhelming, and next time, we plan on going with a list, some recipes, and NOT on a weekend. Even though the store is Korean-American, the offerings are varied and range from Vietnamese to Indian to Japanese, Chinese, and more. We stocked up on some of our son’s favorite snack foods-including the biggest bag of shrimp crackers we’ve ever seen. 

I’ll admit that I’m a total sucker for packaging, and when you can’t read what’s inside, the packages look even more compelling. I could have spend hours just photographing the ways different spices, noodles, rices, drinks, and snack foods were presented. At the very least, I did what my phone could do and snapped a few shots.

(Want to see more Korean products without traveling all the way to Burlington? Click here to visit our site where we’ve added some great new offerings from Korea. And for Japanese products you might find inspiring, visit our sister site, japanistic.com by clicking here.)