Where Does It Come From?

Happy Sixth Year Blogaversary JSFR! To celebrate, I’m showcasing a snack haunt every month (in no particular order) so you locals and interested non-locals can see where I get my snack stash.

HUA XING ASIAN MARKET

aka My Second Favorite Asian Grocery Store

Located at 2867 Washtenaw in Ypsilanti, Hua Xing is a truly awesome place. It’s on the south side of the street right next to the Chinese Buffet II pretty close to the dealership zone. Don’t tell my Favorite Asian Grocery Store but if Hua Xing had been built a titch earlier, it certainly wouldn’t have been my second favorite Asian Grocery Store. Truly! I mean, look at the snacks…


And that’s just the ‘Gaijin’ snacks because there’s all sorts of other things in this store.


You can’t buy this Guinea Pig but you certainly can buy any of the staples or cracker like entities that surround him. This place is hyooj! They even have a home wares section! It’s like a tiny Chinese Meijers.


The thing that puts Hua Xing over the top are the tanks. These turtles aren’t for some Chinese or Korean fishtank at home. Nope, they are for woking and that’s just outrageously awesome!


Wall o’ fish! They even have eel in there and…


Big assed fish. I have no idea what kind of fish this is, but I had one deep fried, battered and covered in honey once at a Chinese wedding. Donut fish was frikkin delicious people and if I knew how to make it, I’d be gettin my donut fish right here. The best part about Hua Xing is that they are hands down the best priced snack haunt in town.


Plus, they have frogs. FROGS!

TSAI GROCERY

aka My Favorite Asian Grocery Store

Located at 3115 Oak Valley Dr. in Ann Arbor, this is the store that started it all for me. Hence the nickname because really? There might be another store which is bigger and has more selection. Might! Anyway, Tsai has a good venue of snackage (unless you have been doing an Asian Themed Snack Food Review for six years, then their selection is decent) and a wall of videos. Don’t ask me what they are renting, all the videos are in a character language I can’t read. Unless one of the videos has a flavor or a type because I can recognize that character!


The aisles are nice and wide and there’s about two lanes of snackerage. Plus other grocery things and a small house wares section. Sadly, the sweety section of the snacks wasn’t as awesome as I remembered it but the tea section still wrocks on strong.

WIZZYWIG

Wizzywig (4720 State Street) is one of my oldest snackfood haunts, predating the JSFR even. Their first store was located on South University right above the Apothecary I believe. Or at least close to there and I’d sometimes pop up to see what they had on their wall of snacks.

Then they moved to Liberty Street and a space at least 3 or 4 times bigger than their tiny top floor shop and still they had their wall of snacks. After a couple years they packed up shop and moved down by the airport to a store that’s about the same size as their first top floor shop. However, they still have their wall of snacks.


SNACKS!


Snacks are only a part of what Wizzywig is about for they are also a merchandise haven for anime fans. I confess that in the past I have come away with quite a few non candy items from Wizzywig myself. In fact, I might have also purchased a Domokun magnet when I picked up my snacks for Wizzywig’s snack review month. DOMO!

Wizzywig has a strong web presence as well as having a physical shop, which is different from any of my other snack food haunts. J-list is, to the best of my knowledge, entirely an online entity while Hua Xing, Tsai and the other places you will meet later are purely physical in nature and have no web ordering capabilities. Wizzywig has a foot in each world which makes it kinda novel and unique.

On the down side, Wizzywig is also on the pricy end of snack foodage. Pocky will run you about $3.50 a pop and the Gummies were $3 a bag. Then again, they do have an impressively diverse selection of Gummy snacks.


Rarh!

MANNA ORIENTAL MARKET

aka The Most Korean of Asian Grocery Stores

Located at 1149 Broadway Street in Ann Arbor this snack haunt is chock full of Korean goodies. This was where I first ran into Peppero and Toppo and I found Ting Ting Jare Ginger candy when we went in for pics and snacks. The ginger candy is worth the trip to the north side alone. Man, that’s good stuff. Manna also has a small house goods section where we found a combo toaster rice cooker deelie that My Favorite Guinea Pig was indescribably intrigued about.


Plus the Wall of Kim Chi. You know you’re in the real Korean deal when you turn the corner to find two full length fridge sections stocked with Kim Chi. It even comes in white. WHITE! When we went to get snacks and pics they had a tasting table out with more Kim Chi (we did not partake).


Snacks. Since I’ve gone in last they’ve moved the food around some. Where I was standing for the pic used to be the freezer snacks section (which has been moved closer towards the Wall of Kim Chi…at the end of the aisle that boogers off screen on the right there). They’ve always had milk crates full of snack goodies though. This time around I found a fridge section with drinks and whatnot which is new, plus a nice freezer box of Goyza and other things of that ilk.

As far as price, we made it out of there with eight snack entities and it cost us only $12 and change. Not bad, not bad at all.