Seafood City, Seattle

After our recent delivery in Seattle, we stopped at a large mall to run a few errands. The usual  mall shops were present with an occasional surprise here and there, but when we came upon Seafood City, we had to go in and explore.

The store, which specializes in Filipino foodstuffs - and to a lesser extent, Asian, Mexican, and other ethnicities - impressed us. It's clean. Organized. Well stocked. The help are friendly.

First, the produce section. Among the fruits and vegetables we would see in our local grocery were specialties I'd never spotted before. There were apples that couldn't be mistaken for anything else, but looked completely different from apples I'd ever seen before. Banana leaves?? What are those used for? Eggplants in every color and size. String beans long enough to lasso a calf. I could have spent hours just taking pictures and notes in the produce section, but the produce guy was suspicious of me as it is.

Indian Bittermelon

Banana Blossom Tip

Then we moved on to the dry goods ...

Got Rice?

Choose Your Noodle

Stacked Cases of 1 lb Bags of MSG

Datu Puti (what??) Next to Bottled Lye Water

And my favorite:

Hello Kitty Roasted Seasoned Seaweed Bar

A seaweed brownie.

Really? People eat this stuff willingly? Without the threat of death if they don't??

And then, a fruit I thought I'd never see in person. One that dominates extreme eating food shows.

Durian

Durian?? God, why?

And slightly less disturbing:

Chicken "Feet"

Also known as Chicken "Paws" in the local Walmart Supercenter, as we discovered later.

And fnally, we discovered the Department of Fish.

Which provided half an hour of camera fun for me, a diehard Sopranos fan.

But as impressed as I was, it still isn't a Wegman's.