All Those Customers Must Be There For The Talapia Fish!!!!

This store makes me happy I've committed to the neighborhood because...
...I could live on their Talapia fish for month and never want anything else for dinner. They have hot deli items like sesame balls, sticky rice wrapped in banana leaves, Hmong sweet corn cake. OK, yeah, I've been eating there a lot. This place is right next to the upcoming "eco village" and dominates the "Corridor of Safety" to the bus stop. It is a "destination location" due to its great selection and prices.

They have plenty of everything I need in both Asian and American groceries. Sometimes their inventory system throws me off, because I'm the kind of guy who will just pick some item off the shelf I've never tried before and eat it, the more exotic the better. Sometimes they toss items needing preparation right next to the snack foods, and so I'll pick up some kind of dried fish and have to ask, "Can I eat it just like this?"

No you can't.

Well, I wonder, then why is it right next to the tasty "shrimp chips?"

They have tons of movies, and not a single one in English. But after watching "Honesty" at Highland Tire, I decided I could probably enjoy a Thai movie and never need to hear a word of my own language. Believe me, cheesy Thai movies are just like cheesy American movies...you know the guy is going to switch bodies with the dog when you see the lighting storm getting worse, and he's out in the storm chasing the dog.

One night I was chatting with the bus driver on the "22," and I mentioned Bangkok Market. It turned out his uncle is the owner. He wanted to know about the prices of houses in the neighborhood. I told him, "Talk to your uncle. Buy a house near your uncle. You should see your uncle more."

One night I had to take a cab out to the house--but I'm that committed to my nightly security checks--and I was talking to the Somali cab driver. I told him the same thing. Buy a house. The market has never been better and the bargains are on the North Side. You just have to make sure you've got security, for now, but maybe things can actually be turned around and North Side could become an affordable paradise.

But in regard to Bangkok Market, I asked the nephew of the owner (the guy driving the bus) "If your uncle is Hmong, why is the place called Bangkok market?"

He said most of the items come from Thailand, so it made sense, he said. But they have pictures of the King of Thailand hanging on the wall, reverently. Clearly, this is about more than the source of the groceries. I guess I need to learn more about the Hmong. I always thought they were from Vietnam, but either there are a lot of them in Thailand, too, or they've spent so much time in Thailand they've begun to "self-identify" as Thai.

It's all good. Let me tell you about the fish. They stuff it with cilantro, onion and one other spice (they were vague about what that spice was) and it's so delicious, I even ate the meat behind the head, and practically licked every one of the bones, and ate all the skin though it stuck to my fingers severely. (The good flavor in a Talapia fish is in the skin, just like with a crappie, which it closely resembles)

Their Talapia fish doesn't LOOK like much...it looks almost like a biological specimen, wrapped in plastic. But it's so good. Also, I personally witnessed the store's deli pass a rather severe inspection by the City of Minneapolis while I was in there. The next day I bought some wonderful tripe soup just to show I had confidence in their deli after witnessing their meek demeanor in response to the sharp, pointed questions by the inspector.

"You like tripe?" the owner said. "A lot of people won't eat tripe."

"It doesn't make sense to avoid eating tripe," I said. "Why will people eat a cow's butt but they'll turn their nose up at the intestines?"

There were some other pieces of unknown organs in the soup, too, and I couldn't figure out precisely what they were. I managed to narrow it down to kidneys or gonads. It was great soup, either way, and a comfort at the cold bus stop.