By Hannah Oliver
Crabs scutter in a nearby tank as customers look at the golden pomfret, a pink-scaled, red-eyed delicacy typically fried and served whole. The scent of sweet and sour chicken follows customers around the store as they shop, the aroma leading them to the connected restaurant after paying for groceries. A new food experience for some, this ethnic market feels like a piece of home to many Asian Americans in Mississippi.
Located in the heart of Starkville, Miss., is the Asian Foods Market-Restaurant. This combination of a sit-down eatery and grocery store offers dim sum, small bite-sized dishes served in bamboo baskets, and fresh ingredients like lotus root and dragon fruit that cannot be found anywhere else for at least 50 miles. This ethnic store is perfect for anyone who cooks their own cuisines, because ingredients such as kimchi, dried mushrooms, and sauces for every occasion are not typical to chain grocery stores.
For people who are not familiar with the shop, entering this store is less of a casual shopping trip and more of a cultural experience and a chance to learn. Tanks rumble from the middle of the market, drawing in customers to observe the lobsters clustered together in their glass case. Crates line the floor, filled with bright greens and exotic fruits that most locals would not know the names of. The design of the Asian Foods Market-Restaurant is meant to be comparable to markets in Asian countries, with the typical grocery run being fast paced, and the quarters being much closer together than in American chain stores.
Kevin Yang, the owner of the Asian Foods Market-Restaurant, grew up in Starkville, and opened the business in 2011 just as an Asian market, without the restaurant. With his parents immigrating from China to New York in the 1980s, he thanked his heritage and upbringing for his experience with Asian cuisine. Growing up in a small city, there was never a place for his family to buy international ingredients, so they had to travel.
“During like Christmas or Thanksgiving, we would always go out to Birmingham because that’s the closest one, or the one in Atlanta for the bigger markets,” Yang said.
When customers enter the store, they can go left to the restaurant, filled with neon signs showcasing some of the dishes like the classic General Tso's chicken and Yang’s favorite, the ginger scallion lobster. Customers can also opt to go to the right, leading to the market, where an endless assortment of fresh produce, meat, and cookware await. Adapting to the growing number of Asian Americans in Starkville, this market provides a look into a culture that sometimes gets overlooked in a small Mississippi town.
According to the Unites States Census Bureau, Asian Americans make up over one percent of Mississippi’s population, so there was some interest in opening an ethnic store in Starkville, but Yang wanted to expand the market to other groups. He found that opening the restaurant in 2018 brought in a more diverse group of people. Suddenly more college students roamed the aisles and sat down to eat.
“I think adding in the restaurant brought in a whole different demographic of people just because most of our customers before then were more international customers, like Asians and Indians,” Yang said. “Other people I guess didn’t really know what we sold because there wasn’t really a reason for them to go.”
People who would otherwise never get to experience shopping at an international food store now have the chance to try new dishes and incorporate new ingredients into their diets. Most Americans do not get the chance to visit Asian countries in their lifetime, so bringing some diverse cultural experiences to Mississippi provides a chance to try new things, and the affordable fresh food isn’t bad either.
Yang claims his favorite food to make with ingredients from his market is sushi because ingredient options are endless. Seaweed wraps, pickled ginger, and any dipping sauces one would desire can be found on the first aisle walking into the store.
Fresh crab and shrimp, either in tanks or on ice, are available to make any roll imaginable. Go for a California roll, the cult classic of crab, avocado, and cucumber, or go for something more exotic like the spider roll, a combination of fried soft-shell crab, cucumber, avocado, topped off with spicy mayonnaise.
For more adventurous customers, the restaurant offers traditional Asian cuisine such as hot pots, which Yang says are more of an experience than just a meal. Customers are given their own burner and a pot filled with soup. An array of vegetables, thinly sliced pork and chicken, and dumplings are brought to the table to be cooked at their own pace and eaten with dipping sauces. Dishes like hot pots make the restaurant a hot spot for families because it is commonly a shared meal.
Despite the coronavirus impacting the normalcy of the past year, the Asian Foods Market-Restaurant is open for business, with masks required. With dozens of cuisines to choose from in the restaurant, and endless possibilities for cooking in the market, this store is for anyone looking to broaden their horizons and experience another culture in Starkville.
