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| Great Wall has Chinese duck, pork and chickens |
Luckily, I got an expert report from Emily of the Howard County Cook blog. Emily is a first-generation Chinese-American who was born in Chicago and raised in Houston, home to one of the largest Chinatowns in the United States.
Emily's parents originally immigrated from Taiwan for graduate school. She and her family -- including a husband and two kids -- moved to Maryland about five years ago. She volunteers at local shelters, their school and church, and she has blogged about all kinds of eating and recipes, including red cooked pork belly and a yellow curry with squash and chicken. She also wrote a great series based on the finds in her Breezy Willow CSA.
Emily and I got to talking about Great Wall, which is a Chinese-run grocery on Rte 40 just inside Rte 695. I'm a huge fan of the Korean-run supermarkets like H Mart and Lotte, and they both offer Indian, Chinese, Vietnamese and other cuisines. But I wondered what finds might make it worth driving past both to try a market aimed at a Chinese market. Emily checked out Great Wall, giving her report and suggesting some items just like the Unmanly Chef wrote up the Caspian Market last month:
Even though I live five minutes from the Lotte close to Rte 29 and Rte 40, I usually travel to H Mart about 15 minutes away because I know where everything is. I find the produce to be more consistent on any given day, and it’s small, which means there is a higher turn around on their produce.
I was a little worried I would find Great Wall to be too far. It really wasn’t. I drove past H Mart, past Rte 695, and there it was, just inside 695 on the left. Google told me it would take 22 minutes. Google was about right on. I realized I had been there before -- at the Asian grocery that was there previously, but apparently had closed.
Once inside, I was impressed by the variety of produce, all looking fresh. Check. The prices looked good too. There were some really great deals, and some fair prices, comparable to the other Asian stores. I was VERY happy to find a huge stack of perfect Japanese eggplant. Not bruised, not wrinkled, perfect. The only thing I wasn’t crazy about, was that many of the leafy Chinese vegetables were pre-packaged into plastic bags. That sort of thing drives me nuts. I like to see, touch, examine, and pick my own produce, so I wasn’t a fan of that. Not all of the produce was that way, just most of the green Chinese veggies. I'm not sure why, and I hope they do away with that.
