Saturday, I found myself in the suburbs. Specifically, I was in Cary, a (for now) suburban dreamscape that is a divisive subject among residents given the number of people who have relocated there from out of state. I have been intermittently watching a Netflix show about Asian megacities, so I took the opportunity to visit H Mart to look around and have a late lunch.

H Mart is not a normal American grocery store, and while there was one in Cambridge I never ventured the short distance from Harvard to Central Square for that purpose so this was my first visit. You enter into a section of fruits and vegetables with a makeup boutique also cornered off to greet you as if you were entering a department store. The fare is more varied than what I grew up with and there is an obvious bent towards Asian varieties. I did not see rambutans, so rejecting the similar lychees I did not purchase any groceries. After walking though the fruits and vegetables, you circle around the back past the meat and kimchi. Then there are rows and rows of items where little to none of the packaging is in English, but that is not unique among international markets. The back left corner is a fish market that had some wonderful-looking salmon steaks and sashimi. The smell in the fish market section was close to some of the markets I have visited myself in Asia. Yes, it is the smells of a market that linger longest in my memory. Some have been wonderful, like the spice markets in India, and some have not, like a particular market in the afternoon heat of Saigon.

After my walking tour, I circled back through the bakery (the macaroons looked delectable, but that isn’t my area of expertise) and wandered back to the alleyway on the far right of the store to browse the menus at the built-in food stalls. I cobbled together a three-course meal for myself with fried octopus balls as an appetizer, Korean fried chicken as my main, and sushi for dessert. Not that I intended it to be a multi-course meal, but my orders were ready at different times from different stalls. The octopus was easily the best of the three dishes, meaning that the meal started with its crescendo and waned from there like an anticlimactic narrative.

The store is about a half hour from my current apartment, so visiting won’t become a normal part of my routine but it was nice to get a dose of different this weekend, however sanitized. My propensity to walk through markets and grocery stores in each new place I visit, though, will persist. I have found that to be among the quickest ways to learn about a place and its people. I like to think I inherited this habit from my grandfather, even if I never joined him in any of his own scouting visits to grocery stores.