First let me say that I managed to figure out my photo uploading issued with Wordpress.  Turns out that I have neglected upgrading to the new version for months and months now and after upgrading to the lates WP version, everything is working again.  Well…sort of.  I have never been able to upload via Firefox so only IE works. 

Yesterday I had my 6th prenatal visit at American Hospital so I thought I’d try to find the nearby Kim’s mart that is on my map of Dubai Asian Grocery Stores and also to pick up some Thai basil from Sunflower foodmart for a Vietnamese dish that I’m cooking up this weekend.

So I drove out of American Hospital towards Lamcy and followed my map to find this Kim’s mart.  I drove and drove around in circles trying the other nearby streets as well.  No luck!  If anyone has any idea where this market is, please be so kind as to let me know.  I have also heard of something called Dean’s Fuji-something Japanese mart.  Any leads on this would be great as well!

I’ve been to Sunflower (the Thai store) in Karama twice now so can pretty much find it without my map.  However, I haven’t been able to drive myself directly in front of the store.  I always end up on a one-way loop about two blocks away – it’s easier for me to just park and walk the two blocks than to figure out from my map how to loop around again.  I love the fact that the streets of Karama are windy-bendy but I also hate it for the same reason.  If you know where to go, it’s all peachy-keen but if you don’t, then it’s a f@*%ing nightmare.

Anyway, I got to the store around 4:30pm as I remember getting there once between 1 and 4pm and it was closed.  They seemed to have a new shipment that just arrived from Thailand or something because there were 10 or so styrofoam ice boxes in the back area with loads of Asian goodies for making all sorts of yummy dishes!

In addition to Thai basil, I bought some Asian cilantro (I don’t know what it’s really called but in Puerto Rico it’s called “recao” and it’s great for spaghetti bolegnese and in Vietnamese, my mom calls it something that translates to “nice-smelling-herb” and I’ve seen it labeled as “sawtooth herb” in some cookbooks.  Anyway, we use it for Vietnamese Sweet and Sour Soup - yum yum yum!  Here’s what it looks like:

Finally, I also bought a large taro because I needed it for my Vietnamese spring rolls.  At least I hope it’s taro because it looks different from what I thought it should look like.  I guess I’ll find out tomorrow when I cut into the thing! Sadly, I did not find any sugarcane (normally sold in a can) so I guess making Vietnames grilled shrimp on sugarcane is out.

Sunflower also has a bunch of other things I might find useful in the future such as banana leaves, pandan leaves, lots of Asian veggies, spices, etc.  I also liked the fact that most of the unidentifiable stuff (at least to me) was labeled in English.

After Karama, I had an hour to kill before meeting up with my husband so I decided to see if I could find the Korean foodmart in Al Barsha called “1004 Mart” which is also on my map (which I forgot to print out and bring with me) so after driving around in circles a bit I finally found it (see picture of store front above).

The store stocks mostly Korean items similar to the Hanarum and Safestway one but the items are labeled in English which is a big help since I don’t read Korean and don’t know what 99.9% of the stuff is.  Maybe after my Vietnamese supper party I’ll do a Korean one?

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Posted in food by sd-b 5 Comments