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Default The Lure of H Mart

GM wrote:

> https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/11/dining/h-mart.html
>
> The Lure of H Mart, Where the Shelves Can Seem as Wide as Asia
>
> The huge grocery chain and other megastores like it have
> revolutionized the way many Asian-Americans shop and eat.
>
> By Ligaya Mishan
> May 11, 2021
>
> "At the H Mart on Broadway at 110th Street in Manhattan, the lights
> are bright on the singo pears, round as apples and kept snug in white
> mesh, so their skin wont bruise. Here are radishes in hot pink and
> winter white, gnarled ginseng grown in Wisconsin, broad perilla
> leaves with notched edges, and almost every kind of Asian green: yu
> choy, bok choy, ong choy, hon choy, aa choy, wawa choy, gai lan, sook
> got.
>
> The theme is abundance €” chiles from fat little thumbs to witchy
> fingers, bulk bins of fish balls, live lobsters brooding in blue
> tanks, a library of tofu. Cuckoo rice cookers gleam from the shelves
> like a showroom of Aston Martins. Customers fill baskets with wands
> of lemongrass, dried silvery anchovies, shrimp chips and Wagyu beef
> sliced into delicate petals.
>
> For decades in America, this kind of shopping was a pilgrimage.
> Asian-Americans couldnt just pop into the local Kroger or Piggly
> Wiggly for a bottle of fish sauce. To make the foods of their
> heritage, they often had to seek out the lone Asian grocery in town,
> which was salvation €” even if cramped and dingy, with scuffed
> linoleum underfoot and bags of rice slumped in a corner.
>
> Il Yeon Kwon, a farmers son who left South Korea in the late 1970s
> when the countryside was still impoverished from war, opened the
> first H Mart in Woodside, Queens, in 1982. It was the middle of a
> recession. At the time, only about 1.5 percent of the American
> population was of Asian descent. Later that year, Vincent Chin, a
> Chinese-American, was beaten to death in Detroit by two white
> autoworkers who were reportedly angered by the success of the
> Japanese car industry. Asian-Americans, a disparate group of many
> origins that had historically not been recognized as a political
> force, came together to condemn the killing and speak in a collective
> voice.
>
> Today, as they again confront hate-fueled violence, Asian-Americans
> are the nations fastest-growing racial or ethnic group, numbering
> more than 22 million, nearly 7 percent of the total population. And
> there are 102 H Marts across the land, with vast refrigerated cases
> devoted to kimchi and banchan, the side dishes essential to any
> Korean meal. In 2020, the company reported $1.5 billion in sales.
> Later this year, its set to open its largest outpost yet, in a space
> in Orlando, Fla., that is nearly the size of four football fields.
>
> And H Mart has competition: Other grocery chains that specialize in
> ingredients from Asia include Patel Brothers (Patel Bros, to fans),
> founded in Chicago; and, headquartered in California, Mitsuwa
> Marketplace and 99 Ranch Market €” or Ranch 99, as Chinese speakers
> sometimes call it. Theyre part of a so-called ethnic or
> international supermarket sector estimated to be worth $46.1 billion,
> a small but growing percentage of the more than $653 billion American
> grocery industry.
>
> Many of these chains have a particular focus (H Marts is Korean
> products), but also attempt the difficult feat of catering to a
> variety of Asian-American groups with different tastes and shopping
> preferences.
>
> Mr. Kwons first store still stands in Woodside, with a blue awning
> that bears H Marts original name, Han Ah Reum. This is commonly
> translated from Korean as €œan armful,€ but has a poetic nuance,
> invoking warmth and care, as in an embrace.
>
> H Mart is €œa beautiful, holy place,€ writes the musician Michelle
> Zauner, who performs under the name Japanese Breakfast, in her new
> memoir, €œCrying in H Mart,€ published last month. The book begins
> with her standing in front of the banchan refrigerators, mourning the
> death of her Korean-born mother. €œWere all searching for a piece of
> home, or a piece of ourselves.€
>
> As the 20th-century philosopher Lin Yutang wrote, €œWhat is patriotism
> but the love of the food one ate as a child?€
>
> For an immigrant, cooking can be a way to anchor yourself in a world
> suddenly askew. There is no end to the lengths some might go to taste
> once more that birthday spoonful of Korean miyeok guk, a soup dense
> with seaweed, slippery on the tongue, or the faintly bitter undertow
> of beef bile in Laotian laap diip (raw beef salad).
>
> When Vilailuck Teigen €” the co-author, with Garrett Snyder, of €œThe
> Pepper Thai Cookbook,€ out in April €” was a young mother in western
> Utah in the 1980s, she ordered 50-pound bags of rice by mail and
> drove 150 miles to Salt Lake City to buy chiles. She had no mortar
> and pestle, so she crushed spices with the bottom of a fish-sauce
> bottle. Around the same time, Thip Athakhanh, 39, the chef of
> Snackboxe Bistro in Atlanta, was a child in a small town in
> east-central Alabama, where her family settled after fleeing Laos as
> refugees. They fermented their own fish sauce, and her father made a
> weekly trek to Atlanta to pick up lemongrass and galangal at the
> international farmers market.
>
> The essayist Jay Caspian Kang has described Americans of Asian
> descent as €œthe loneliest Americans.€ Even after the government eased
> restrictions on immigration from Asia in 1965, being an
> Asian-American outside major cities often meant living in isolation €”
> the only Asian family in town, the only Asian child at school. A
> grocery store could be a lifeline.
>
> When the writer Jenny Han, 40, was growing up in Richmond, Va., in
> the 90s, her family shopped at the hole-in-the-wall Oriental Market,
> run by a woman at their church. It was the one place where they could
> load up on toasted sesame oil and rent VHS tapes of Korean dramas,
> waiting to pounce when someone returned a missing episode.
>
> A few states away, the future YouTube cooking star Emily Kim €” better
> known as Maangchi €” was newly arrived in Columbia, Mo., with a stash
> of meju, bricks of dried soybean paste, hidden at the bottom of her
> bag. She was worried that in her new American home she wouldnt be
> able to find such essentials.
>
> Then she stumbled on a tiny shop, also called Oriental Market. One
> day the Korean woman at the counter invited her to stay for a bowl of
> soup her husband had just made.
>
> €œShe was my friend,€ Maangchi recalled.
>
> The H Mart of today may be a colossus, but it remains a family
> business. Mr. Kwon, 66, has two children with Elizabeth Kwon, 59, who
> grew up two blocks from the Woodside shop (where her mother still
> lives) and oversees store design.
>
> From the beginning, it was important to her that the stores were
> clean, modern and easy to navigate, to defy the stereotype of Asian
> groceries as grimy and run-down.
>
> €œIts so emotional, shopping for food,€ said her son, Brian Kwon, 34.
> €œYou dont want to be in a place where you feel like youre
> compromising.€
>
> He never intended to devote his life to the store. But not long after
> he went abroad to take a job in Seoul €” seeking to improve his Korean
> €” his father asked him to come home and look over the companys
> books, to make sure everything was running smoothly.
>
> It was, as Mr. Kim of the Canadian TV show €œKims Convenience€ might
> say, a sneak attack. Once Brian Kwon entered the office, he never
> left. €œMy father called it his "golden plan, after the fact,€ he
> said ruefully. He is now a co-president, alongside his mother and his
> sister, Stacey, 33. (His father is the chief executive.)
>
> For many non-Asian customers, H Mart is itself a sneak attack. On
> their first visit, theyre not actually looking for Asian
> ingredients; customer data shows that theyre drawn instead to the
> variety and freshness of more familiar produce, seafood and meat.
> Only later do they start examining bags of Jolly Pong, a sweet
> puffed-wheat snack, and red-foil-capped bottles of Yakult €” a
> fermented milk drink that sold out after it appeared in Ms. Hans
> best-selling novel-turned-movie €œTo All The Boys Ive Loved Before.€
>
> To be welcoming to non-Koreans, H Mart puts up signs in English. At
> the same time, the younger Mr. Kwon said, €œWe dont want to be the
> gentrified store.€ So while some non-Asians recoil from the tanks of
> lobsters, the Kwons are committed to offering live seafood.
>
> Deuki Hong, 31, the chef and founder of the Sunday Family Hospitality
> Group, in San Francisco, remembers the H Mart of his youth in New
> Jersey as €œjust the Korean store€ €” a sanctuary for his parents,
> recent immigrants still not at ease in English. Everyone spoke
> Korean, and all that banchan was a relief: His mother would pack them
> in her cart for dinner, then pretend shed made them herself.
>
> Later, as a teenager, he started seeing his Chinese- and
> Filipino-American friends there, too, and then his non-Asian friends.
> Spurred by postings on social media, young patrons would line up to
> buy the latest snack sensation €” €œthe snack aisle is notorious,€ Mr.
> Hong said €” like Haitai honey butter chips and Xiao Mei boba ice
> cream bars. (The current craze: Orion chocolate-churro-flavored
> snacks that look like baby turtles.)
>
> In €œMister Jius in Chinatown,€ a new cookbook by the chef Brandon
> Jew and Tienlon Ho, Mr. Jew, 41, recalls Sunday mornings in San
> Francisco with his ying ying (paternal grandmother), taking three bus
> transfers to traverse the city, on a mission for fresh chicken €”
> sometimes slaughtered on the spot €” and ingredients like pea shoots
> and lotus leaves.
>
> He still prefers €œthat Old World kind of shopping,€ he said, from
> independent vendors, each with his own specialties and occasional
> grouchiness and eccentricities. But he knows that the proliferation
> of supermarkets like H Mart and 99 Ranch makes it easier for
> newcomers to Asian food to recreate his recipes.
>
> €œAccess to those ingredients leads to a deeper understanding of the
> cuisine,€ he said. €œAnd that in turn can become a deeper
> understanding of a community and a culture.€ These days, even
> mainstream markets carry Asian ingredients. Ms. Teigen, who now lives
> in Los Angeles, often buys basics like fish sauce, palm sugar and
> curry paste from the Thai section at Ralphs. Still, she goes to 99
> Ranch for coconut milk, whole jackfruit and, above all, garlic in
> bulk €” €œa giant bag that I can use for months.€
>
> (Garlic is an urgent matter for Asian-Americans: Ms. Zauner, 32,
> writes in €œCrying in H Mart€ that the store is €œthe only place where
> you can find a giant vat of peeled garlic, because its the only
> place that truly understands how much garlic youll need for the kind
> of food your people eat.€)
>
> But Meherwan Irani, 51, the chef of Chai Pani in Asheville, N.C., and
> Atlanta, feels that something is lost when you buy paneer and
> grass-fed ghee at a Whole Foods Market. You miss the cultural
> immersion, he says, €œgetting a dunk and having horizons broadened.€
>
> €œAn Indian grocery is not just a convenience €” its a temple,€ he
> said. €œYoure feeding the soul. Come in and pick up on the energy.€
>
> In the TV special €œLuda Cant Cook,€ which premiered in February, Mr.
> Irani takes the rapper Ludacris to Cherians, an Indian supermarket in
> Atlanta. Once Mr. Irani had to scrounge for spices like cumin and
> turmeric at health food stores; now, surrounded by burlap sacks
> stuffed with cardamom pods and dried green mango, he tells Ludacris,
> €œThis is my house.€
>
> The writer Min Jin Lee, 52, remembers how important H Mart was to
> people working in Manhattans Koreatown in the 80s, when it was
> still called Han Ah Reum and €œtiny, with almost no place to negotiate
> yourself through the aisles,€ she said. (It has since moved across
> West 32nd Street to a larger space.) Her parents ran a jewelry
> wholesale business around the corner, and relied on the store for a
> cheap but substantial dosirak (lunch box) that came with cups of soup
> and rice.
>
> She sees the modern incarnation of the store as a boon for second-
> and third-generation Korean Americans, including thousands of
> Korean-born adoptees raised by white American parents, who €œwant to
> find some sort of connection to the food of their families,€ she
> said. €œThere arent gatekeepers to say whos in or whos out.€
>
> Maangchi moved to Manhattan in 2008, and used to buy most of her
> ingredients from one of the H Marts in Flushing, Queens. (These days
> she just walks to Koreatown.) To save money, she would take the
> subway, bringing an empty backpack and her own shopping cart, then
> walk for 20 minutes.
>
> €œOnce I get there, my heart is beating,€ she said. On the way home,
> shed stop at a barbecue spot and drink soju. €œCome home drunk,€ she
> said with a laugh.
>
> Sometimes when shes at H Mart, one of her more than five million
> YouTube subscribers recognizes her and flags her down. Those seeking
> advice (or a photo op) are mostly non-Korean. But, she said, there
> are also €œold ladies who come up to me and say, "I forgot everything
> €” I left Korea long ago.€
>
> Recently, with the rise in incidents of violence against people of
> Asian descent, her fans have been sending her messages: €œMaangchi,
> Im so worried about you these days.€
>
> This is the paradox: that at a time when Americans are embracing
> Asian culture as never before, at least in its most accessible forms
> €” eating ramen, drinking chai, swooning over the K-pop band BTS €”
> anti-Asian sentiment is growing. With visibility comes risk.
>
> For Ms. Lee, this makes H Mart a comfort. €œI like going there because
> I feel good there,€ she said. €œIn the context of hatred against my
> community, to see part of my culture being valued €” its
> exceptional...€
>
> </>


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