Best Discount Asian Foods

Richmond New May Wah Supermarket

Comments (0) Wednesday, May 23 2001

The thing about May Wah is that the place offers a little bit of everything -- guava tea, clay pots, red bean mochi, eel, fresh lobster balls, fresh squid, dried squid, canned squid, Crest toothpaste, playing cards, not to mention the notoriously stinky, spiky-skinned, and often dangerous durian fruit. The other thing about May Wah is that the prices are absurdly cheap -- after all, where else can you get coconut milk for 59 cents, curry paste for 69 cents, or a pound of fresh Shanghai noodles for a whopping $1.09? May Wah has sweet black rice, lemongrass powder, fresh galangal, 20 kinds of seaweed, the best fresh shiitakes you've ever tasted, plus good old-fashioned staples like 99-cent soy sauce and $1.29 Chinese five-spice powder ("Ingredients: spice"). Depending on which languages you speak, the staff at this no-frills mecca of Asian cookery might not be able to help you locate anything (English, in our experience, won't get you far). But then, the beauty of May Wah is that you'll discover all sorts of items you didn't know you needed -- pot sticker wrappers, palm sugar, super-potent tom yum paste -- as you aimlessly wander the aisles.