The local Korean grocery store can be a cultural connection that, for many, goes largely untapped. The most obvious link to Korea through the local grocery store is the food. The store can be a source for many spices and foods not found in a regular chain grocery store. These include the mundane like curry powder, red pepper powder, soy sauce, fish sauce (젓갈) as well as the more hard to find like 고추장, 된장, 쌈장, 미역, and Korean soda pop and 요구르트 (my children love that stuff).
The best food stuffs to get in the grocery store are the prepared foods. Sure, you can get “Wong’s Kimchi” as your local Raleys or Vons but it is horrible, pasteurized, and not much more than pepper and cabbage. Each Korean market will have different tasting 김치 because the owners typically prepare it right thereaccording to their own unique recipe. Just like 김치 from different provinces in Korea will taste different, it will be different in each store. (My wife says that 전라도 김치 is 최고!) You can get a variety of prepared foods besides 김치, too. Usually you can find many different 반찬, of varying degrees of goodness.
Besides food, the Korean grocery store can be a great source of many things non-food like cosmetics, music CDs, kitchen supplies (like chopsticks, rice bowls, rice cookers, and huge buckets that you won’t find anywhere else), bath supplies (like 때타올, soaps, 등등) as well as the ever-popular Korean dramas. The stores usually record the dramas direct from television and then rent the DVDs or tapes. Mostly, these don’t have English subtitles, so you should ask first if that is important to you.
The most overlooked resource that the Korean market has to offer is free, that is the language connection. Most Korean markets I have been in offer free newspapers, phone directories and this time of year, calendars. But they also offer someone to talk to in Korean! The store owners know varying degrees of English and are all too happy to help you speak a bit of Korean, especially if you are a regular customer. If you haven’t discovered your local Korean grocery store, check your yellow pages and give them a visit. Let me know how it goes.
