Two questions that can keep me up at night: What to wear? And what to eat?
The day I headed to the new H Mart on Beach Boulevard — the chain’s largest store stateside — in Westminster, I only got one of those questions right. (Read about my clothing mishap below).
H Mart is a Korean grocery chain, but it’s so much more. K-beauty, individual barbeque grills and hotpots, kawaii stationery, and rows and rows dedicated to Korean snacks, noodles, and sauces.
The banchan (side dishes) section is my favorite. People who call Disneyland the happiest place on earth clearly haven’t been to that section. I’m a serial snacker, and every time I’m at H Mart, I have to pick up some oi muchim (spicy cucumber salad), radish kimchi that my 6-year-old loves, stir-fried hot anchovies, seasoned eggs in soy sauce, an assortment of pickled vegetables, and of course, the fish cakes.
And the fresh food sections. Plump, eggplant-colored mangosteens, red prickly rambutans, reddish-pink bumpy lychees, and hot-pink dragon fruits — a tropical fruit paradise. Squid, crab, king crab, lobster, shrimp, clams, fish in every hue and size. The best part, they cut and clean fish just how you would like it.
Food lovers’ paradise
But there’s not just food to buy. There’s also food to eat. The food court has something for everyone’s palette and craving…