Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we give our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems.)
The stir-fried noodle dish I wanted to make called for oyster sauce and sweet soy. A second recipe a few weeks later required lemongrass and Thai basil. A third, a Mexican-style red chili sauce, was based on dried morita chile peppers.
Any one of those ingredients can make for a tough grocery list, especially at standard outlets of Safeway, Sprouts, King Soopers or Whole Foods. But they were no problem for the Park Hill Supermarket, at 3770 E. 40th Ave., a cavernous store that caters to a fascinating mix of professional cooks, home chefs and locals looking for harder-to-find and international foods, as well as, in many cases, a less expensive source for produce, fish, meat and snacks.
Located in a food desert – meaning there are no other large grocery stores for a couple of miles in any direction – Park Hill Supermarket is first and foremost an Asian market, similar to H Mart, Great Wall or Viet Hoa, although it also carries ingredients and items specific to Mexican cooking.
But it’s also a place to see a melting pot’s worth of people from all backgrounds and walks of life whose own grocery lists are all different. (During the recent, short-lived King Soopers strike, Park Hill Supermarket was another option for shoppers who didn’t want to cross the union picket lines.)
For millions of Americans, there is nothing unusual or “exotic” about anything in this store. For me, though, it serves as a wide window into other cultures, other worlds that I didn’t grow up in – and aisles of food that I had never seen before all in one place.
Nothing says that quite as clearly as the tank of live eels in a corner in the seafood section, where you also can find live tilapia, Dungeness crabs, blue crabs and lobster, along with a vast array of other fish and shellfish, fresh, frozen and packaged.
You can find bananas, apples and oranges at the Park Hill Supermarket. But they sit next to giant mangos, papayas, pepino melons, apple pears, passionfruit, and three or four kinds of plantains. You’ll see onions, tomatoes and cucumbers, but also daikon radishes, kohlrabi, anise and bok choy. In a refrigerated case behind them is a steady supply of lemongrass and Thai basil — which I grab every time I go.
What else? Multiple varieties of dried lotus seeds and fox nuts; dried kelp and seaweed; more kinds of soy sauce (light, dark, sweet, double-fermented), fish sauce, chili oils and marinades than I could imagine; rows and rows of rice (including 25-pound bags) and flour noodles in all shapes, sizes, widths and textures; duck eggs; dried anchovies; and frozen calamari tubes and tentacles.
There are also wonton and eggroll wrappers; frozen dumplings of all kinds; a cooler full of handy hotpot ingredients; dozens and dozens of spices and herbs, tea, candy, toys, cookware, treats; and mountains of ramen — including that oh-so-viral Buldak carbonara instant ramen, which I now have a six-pack of in my cupboard.
Ordinary to some, out of the ordinary to others. A wealth of deliciousness for all.
Next up on my shopping list: rice paper sheets and Sambal Oelek chile paste to make Vietnamese spring rolls.
