February 13, 2008...10:36 am
Grand Asia Market
Geoducks at Grand Asia
by David Cecelski
I could smell the briny aroma of fresh fish and shellfish as soon as I walked into Cary’s Grand Asia Market. The state’s largest Oriental grocery, the Grand Asia Market is like a trip in miniature to New York City or San Francisco’s Chinatown, except here the market is in South Hills Mall, in a sea of parking lots, strip malls and highways. But oh, it’s worth the trip. I went on Chinese New Year—happy Year of the Rat—and the store was festooned with colorful decorations. The market’s café—the Joy Luck Club Restaurant—was serving a dozen different Chinese dishes, as well as freshly-made steam buns. I had a pork and quail egg bun that was delicious.
The store sells ingredients for most kinds of Asian cooking, but most of the customers and employees I met were Chinese. There was a tremendous variety of Asian produce, spices, candies, dry goods and frozen foods. The meat market looked good too, but I love a good fish market and the Grand Asia Market’s fish and shellfish counter was out of this world. It caught my attention immediately and totally held me rapt.
The fish counter was enormous. There was a 20-foot long ice tray full of mostly whole fish. (They must buy mainly from Pacific Rim wholesalers: I saw only a few fish or shellfish that could have come from our waters.) To ensure the freshness that is so highly valued, especially in Cantonese cookery, the market was crowded with aquarium tanks of live, swimming fish and crabs. A host of them were ones that you probably can’t buy anywhere else in North Carolina.
There were buckets of seawater holding live saltwater clams, bushel baskets of live rice paddy snails and live whelks, cockles and periwinkles. There was a tray arrayed with live blue crabs on ice. There were aquarium tanks of live, swimming “Vancouver crabs” (Dungeness crabs, I presume), eels, catfish, tilapia and lobster. There were also crates of live frogs and soft-shell turtles, the latter a delicacy for making soups and stews in China, Vietnam, the Philippines and some other Asian countries.
The most unusual item at the fish counter was an aquarium tank full of geoducks (see the photo at the top), a giant saltwater clam. The clam shell itself is maybe 6-9 inches long, but the siphon or neck can be a yard long. Native to the Northwest Coast of the U.S. and west coast of Canada, geoducks are the largest burrowing clam in the world and a long liver. Their average life expectancy is something like 150 years. I have to admit that I hated to see a living creature that old in an aquarium tank in Cary. Prized in China, Japan and Hong Kong, they are usually eaten in a fondue-style hot pot or raw, sashimi style.
I also saw all kinds of other interesting saltwater things: fresh, whole squid and octopus, sea cucumber, shark fins, dried fish, seaweeds, and large variety of fish balls for Japanese noodle and other soup dishes.
The whole experience was enthralling. It was also one that, here in North Carolina, you can probably only find in Cary. The city of Cary is often maligned as sort of a soulless, suburban wasteland, a world of shopping malls, endless new housing developments and northern transplants. I remember Garrison Keillor referring to the city by the acronym “Containment Area for Relocated Yankees.” That’s not exactly the kind of place that usually draws folklorists or traditional food lovers. Yet, judging from my visit to Grand Asia Market, something interesting is happening out there in the wilds of suburbia. This clearly deserves another look…, and maybe another steamed bun or two.
The Grand Asia Market is located in South Hills Mall at 1253 Buck Jones Road in Cary. The grocery and restaurant are open 7 days a week. For hours and more information, consult the market’s web site at www.grandasiamarket.com. It would make a great field trip for children. Tour the grocery store, have lunch—the kids can always eat pot stickers and steamed rolls if other dishes seem too exotic—and there’s a big ice-skating rink on the other side of Buck Jones Road that would make a good side trip. .
1 Comment
February 13, 2008 at 11:40 pm
Thanks this post is delightful.
I will definitely read your diary..
bye
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