Asian
Malls & Supermarkets in America
Big impressive Asian malls are great places for renewing your family's sense of identity and helping your kids find pride and enjoyment in their ancestral cultures.
by H Y Nahm
GOLDSEA | ASIAMS.NET | ASIAN AMERICAN PARENTING
Great Asian
Malls & Supermarkets
eseda Boulevard a half mile south of the Simi Valley Freeway isn't exactly Main Street USA, but the northwestern reaches of the San Fernando Valley isn't an Asian enclave either. Yet this spring it became home to a shiny new Galleria Market, in a spacious strip mall alongside vanilla establishments like Sav-on, Bodies-in-Motion and Starbucks.
The significance of this development will be most easily appreciated by those who have visited The Galleria in L.A. Koreatown. It's more than a market or even a supermarket. It's a ritzy indoor shopping mall anchored by a big, bright supermarket featuring -- on top of the usual offerings of a Ralph's or an Albertson's -- every item that might be fancied by Corean (Korean) Americans bingeing on ancestral culture. One and a half spacious aisles are devoted to every imaginable brand of ramen. A long colorful aisle is lined with Corean and Japanese cookies and candies. Half an aisle is given over to teas made of everything from ginseng to Corean pear. Busy produce and seafood sections display the arcane ingredients that go into uniquely Corean gourmet dishes.