San Gabriel Superstore — Attraction in San Gabriel

Hard core Chinese Vietnamese only. Chaos you wouldn't find at Ralph's. Vegetables you never knew existed. Food snacks you wouldn't imagine edible. And meat cuts you wouldn't think legal can all be found here along with astringent stinch of chlorine bleach you'd swear it's melting the floor and causing it to be sticky. All that aside, the signature yellow carts with who knows what's that black splash all over will greet you in the parking. But they exist in the lot only. Make sure you grab one before entering the building. You want to battle? Come on the weekend rush hours of day time. Want your car slightly redecorated with nicks and dings? Feel free to come by and get a free load. If you can deal with all that, do swing by until 10pm.

But hell I shop there for the variety. Prices are best not compared with others. Hit and miss weekly but that's the norm. Seasonal ethnic food, sometimes freebies, occasional free sample a la Costco do happen there.

Be sure to bring disinfectant for use before (If you going to use the carts) and after(meats are pack in bags at the meat counter while sat on the other meat adjacent while getting filled.... Kids are best avoided as carts always have the right of ways. There is no sane way to put any kid in these carts.

Update: Make that 9pm closing. Just saw a piece of paper with 8a-9p as the current hours-as of Feb 9, 2022. Things did quiet down since initial review back in the hay days. I guess due to sightly shorter hours and less turn over, the fragrance of this place grew more. Some ethnical foods and goods went away as the accepted level of clean prohibited the economics of having them on the shelves. Rather due to their perishable nature or the supply dried up. The surrounding immediate food court now back in operations but at a much reduced scale and hour. They use to have food by 7:30a but this morning at 8:30a nobody was there and I didn't care enough to find out there new hours. Sorry. Someone in my household brought dimsum there and I can confirm I ate them and...

Even though there are many stores and products for sale in this shopping plaza; however, I still don't like it too much because it seemed chaotic and cluttered, too much like a typical Asian/Chinese shopping center. The stuff inside the market are not well organized, the seafood and meat sections smelt. The space for lining up around cashier's register stands are very cramping, no room to stand in lines because there are shoppers trying to pass you with their shopping carts, very dangerous. The shoppers are rude and they push the carts wrecklessly. Be careful and watch out for those wreckless shoppers. The small stores on the sides outside of the markets are selling stuff gearing towards Asian shoppers, the clothes and shoes are too small in sizes for regular Americans. Most of times, the plaza is not too busy but crowded over the weekends full of Chinese shoppers. The battery center is very good and handy but the rest of the stores are not selling staff of my interests. The lock smith at the corner is very reasonable and handy, but shoppers often miss it because it is hidden in the corner. I never buy any food, drinks and cosmetic products in the plaza so I don't know how they are. In conclusion, this is a typical Asian/Chinese...

The staff at the seafood section had an attitude! They just seemed like they didn’t want to serve you. They didn’t speak English which made it very difficult to communicate with them. I asked an old man there to clean the catfish that I got. Speaking in his own language, he used hand gestures to ask if I wanted to do fish cutlets. I nodded. He then kept asking me how I wanted it to be cleaned, in his own language despite knowing that I didn’t understand, but he kept talking... Seriously, it’s just a common sense that he should clean it the way he would clean for himself! By no mean I knew how to clean it better than he did as that was his job! Then his co-worker told me he skipped a step in cleaning my fish because I didn’t tell him to do so. I never had such this issue at other markets. I just told them to clean the fish and that was it! I also asked him to chop the tilapias in half for me, and he seemed to understand but it turned out he didn’t do either. Please...