Young couples holding hands while perusing imported snacks, old friends sharing stories over piping hot bowls of noodles, and families shopping for produce with their small children — all while the steady, soft beeping of barcodes being scanned rings throughout a massive yet deeply personal grocery store. This is the scene on a bustling Saturday afternoon at 168 Asian Mart, Michigan’s largest Asian grocery and a gathering space designed by one of Detroit’s most influential couples.
168 (the shorthand for regulars in the know) is a huge, 80,000-square-foot store featuring thousands of products from East Asia. The produce section is extensive and wondrous to the Western eye, but, more importantly, it has exactly what Asian families in Michigan need to recreate familiar, comforting dishes at home: tiers of Korean radishes, kabocha squash, fresh coconuts, Chinese nagaimo (yams), lychee, Taiwanese melons, and multiple varieties of Korean pears; boxes of king oyster mushrooms, bok choy, purple eggplants, and so much more. For Asian people in metro Detroit, having access to such ingredients is necessary.
“So many people come in with recipes,” says 168 Group President Cindy Wang with delight. “They bring the recipes — ‘Where do I find these?’”…