Growing up, my weekends were spent in the back seat of my mother’s car as we made our weekly grocery trip to multiple shops, checking items off the list as we went.
Once a month, we added a stop to our circuit, trekking from our New York City suburb to Woodside, Queens, home to Little Manila’s Filipino grocery stores. Also known as sari-sari stores, these businesses, often small and family-run, were the few places where goods imported straight from the Philippines would remind my mother of home. With giddiness, we’d stack our baskets high with an assortment of treasured snacks, pastries and condiments, including salt and vinegar-flavored Oishi Cracklings, Mang Tomas All Purpose Sauce and Stik-o creamy wafer sticks.
This was the early aughts. Even in a place as diverse as New York, stores that sold international grocery products were few and far between. As an adult, I still experience that feeling of scarcity. Whenever I enter an Asian market now, I can’t resist stocking up (and ringing up a hefty bill), anxious that those favorite goods won’t be available again…