East Asia Supermarket — Attraction in Tacoma

Deduct a star for the sketchy neighborhood and general run down feel, but wow--what selection. And WOW--how cheap. They have an excellent selection of different tofus including fresh tofu pudding with ginger sauce packed separately (it was good), and the elusive soft Tacoma tofu (the cadillac of Japanese style tofus). They also have every Filipino sauce and wrapper I could think of, including frozen ingredients and leaves and things. A nice selection of very fresh produce (the ginger looked like it was dug up yesterday) and the cheapest ground pork I've ever seen.

I did get a few hot to go items and they were all good. And I noticed the duck was (gasp!!!) eight dollars for a half. Maybe next time :) It looked fresh but there were only two, although it's probably because I went on a Thursday. I got a full bag for just under twenty dollars, and that includes a banh mi, a deconstructed sticky rice dumpling (all on a tray instead of in a lotus leaf), a green onion bun with pork floss and a weird hand clapping monkey candy, along with the usual suspects of tofu/tofu pudding and random sauces and snacks.

Sure, it smells a little, but it's not the overwhelming offal odor you get at other places. It's more like "musty" and general packaging odors. I'm a little more concerned about the area, bad roads and run down building. The parking is fairly good-sized, so you don't have to worry about street parking, and the stalls...

This is our go-to market for when we need to pick up stuff for various Asian meals we want to make. The store has quite a lot of tasty, hard to find things that other general markets just don't have.

For instance, we wanted to try our hand at making some miso soup (not difficult, but needs some fairly specific ingredients). We were able to find kombu and bonito flakes, as well as a variety of miso. I also wanted to try gochujang, and was able to find it as well.

Store is fairly clean, almost always has a full parking lot, and is almost always fully stocked. The missing star is due to organization. Definitely need to hunt for some items you would expect to be in a certain aisle (kombu, bonito flakes, would expect those to be with the other dried ingredients but they're on the aisle with canned sauces...

Wide variety of noodles, soy sauce, and canned fruit (no guavas though). Dedicated shelf space for foods specific to certain Asian groups like Filipino, etc. It was a bit crowded, but that's exactly what I expect in an Asian store--it's not supposed to be Safeway. I couldn't find mirin, but an employee was caring and diligent enough to hunt down the one kind they do carry. Also no miso, but it's a Korean market, not Japanese. I was able to find most of what I was looking for even though I was unfamiliar with this store, being from out of town. If I'm ever in that part of Tacoma again and in need of Asian food supplies, I will definitely be a...