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Photographs by Kevin A. Roberts
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We were wondering just how much of a bargain the pork bung actually was when, as Gene Autry was whining his way through Here Comes Santy Claus, the Peruvian fishmonger starting beating the life—literally—out of a big, thrashing tilapia.
No, we did not use LSD back in the Sixties. And frankly, we resent the implication we were having a bad flashback. In fact, we were shopping at the just-passed holiday season, along with a rapidly increasing number of St. Louis customers, at the new Seafood City, on Olive, in University City.
Seafood City—which opened a few months ago after upgrading from much smaller quarters a few blocks east on Olive—is probably the largest Asian grocery store in the Midwest outside Chicago. The building must have been an old K-Mart or something like it—it’s enormous. It’s like the Walmart of Asian food and supplies. It’s actually so large and sprawling that it can be a bit intimidating. Do you know a zhu zheng long from a bawal puteh? If not, you’ll need some time to find your way around. It’s worth it, though. Ingredients, fresh and canned, packaged and preserved, are available, some of them for the first time around St. Louis. And prices, even for many foods you can get elsewhere, are worth learning to navigate Seafood City. Your best bet is to turn left when you go in, and do a big circuit around the periphery.
First stop on the tour is the produce section. A dozen varieties of bananas. Tart manzanos. Red bananas that need to be almost black before they ripen to custard sweetness. And male banana flowers, used to wrap fish or meat for steaming, and as a dish all by itself (in addition, lore has it, useful for rubbing on smallpox scars to make them vanish. Just in case that’s a concern.) There’s baby bok choy. Grown up bok choy. Lemongrass. Giant, pale green footballs of Napa. Galangal, a ginger-like rhizome with a piney aroma that tastes like a car air freshener—and we mean that in a good way. Those green herbs in your bowl of Vietnamese pho? You can find them here, fresh, from red perilla to Thai basil to pepper leaf.
On a short, refrigerated shelf at the edge of the produce section are the eggs: chicken, duck, quail, goose. And balut. If you’ve ever watched any of those programs on Food Network or the Travel Channel, where chatty hosts hie themselves off to exotic climes to eat outrageous stuff, you know balut. If you don’t, balut are duck eggs, fertilized so the inside is shall we say, less yolk and more duckling, with beak and claws and maybe even a few pinfeathers. We’ll stop there. But something to keep in mind for the kids with Easter coming up.
If poultry that’s sitting in the case seemingly looking back at you creeps you out, okay. But don’t pretend it’s something exotic. In the poultry trade, chickens and ducks with their heads and feet still attached are known by official USDA regulation as “New York Dressed.” As recently as 1962, more than 80 percent of the chickens sold in the U.S. still had heads and feet attached. If the heads bother you, concentrate on the prices. Duck here goes for about half what you’d pay in most markets. Along the back wall, the fresh poultry gives way to meat, mostly pork, ground pork, pork belly, ribs that are meaty and perfect for Fuji-style pork rib soup, pork chops, every sort of bacon, including air-cured lop yuk, the smoky, delicious Cantonese version.
After the meat, you’re working your way to the back corner of the store, dominated by the fresh seafood department. Don’t overlook some tasty bits on the refrigerated shelves in between, though. Pork brains, intestines, bellies—this is the best place in town to buy leaf, book, and honey tripe—along with the cups of pork blood that, dried and formed into cakes, is the difference between the merely passable and the truly great versions of hot and sour soup. It’s also where you’ll find neat packages of pork bung, which is exactly what you think it is.
In the frozen meat department are quail and rabbits and something called “Young Buddhist Duck” that might make you wonder. Buddhist Duck is just a name for duck that’s been allowed to roam about during its brief, happy life. It’s sort of a free-range duck. (Oh, you thought Buddhists were vegans? The historical Buddha is thought to have died choking on a piece of pork—just one of many things he had in common with Mama Cass.)
A couple of parents have told us they’re taking their kids to the seafood department here since it’s like a trip to the zoo. A delicious one. Go to the regular old zoo and stand in front of the enclosure for the Splurge-footed Hopskwadle and read the preachy sign about how the Hopskwadle is almost extinct in the wild and you can see why, because looking around the enclosure, it’s sure as hell fairly scarce here too. Or, go to Seafood City where you can get right up next to the animals themselves, watch ‘em swimming or crawling around—and take them home and eat them.
Ice-banked counters hold claw-clicking crabs and crawfish. Tanks are filled with lobsters, giant Dungeness crabs, whelks, clams, sea snails, and geoducks. Counters are teeming with so many exotic fish species it’s easy to lose track. Beltfish, parrotfish, big, silvery pomfret, slick mackerel. Slabs of salmon, including the thick cut salmon steaks that have pretty much disappeared from local groceries—and at about half the price of what you’d expect to pay. The biggest bargain here—we know you’re not going to follow our advice but we feel compelled to tell you anyway—are the fish heads at a buck a pound. Have the fishmonger split the heads laterally. Take them home and put them on a wire rack with a cookie sheet underneath. Sprinkle them with coarse sea salt and pop them in the oven for about 20 minutes at around 350 degrees. The cheeks, the collar; there’s a full serving of incredibly good meat there. There are always multiple guys working the counter here, fishing out anything fresh and alive and expertly dispatching, cleaning it, and getting it ready for you however you’d like.
In the middle aisles? It’s a culinary education. If you thought ramen was pretty much it in the dried, instant noodle department, you’re in for a surprise. Every sort of noodle is available, spicy Korean versions, thick Japanese udon wheat noodles, all turned into a tasty lunch that will probably have a week’s worth of sodium with each serving.
The inner aisles have shelf after shelf of canned fruits like Moluccan mangosteens, Java apples, lychees, and one you’re unlikely to find anywhere else. Makok is known in the West as sapodilla, a fruit that looks like a slightly squashed, brown plum and tastes like a sweet, crunchy apple. (Bang is a Thai word for “city;” Bangkok literally means “the city of the makok trees.”) Seafood City sometimes has fresh makok; canned versions are available all year long and if you cannot see the comedic potential of having a can of makok in your cupboard you might want to talk to your doctor about getting some humor injections.
Every utensil, pot, or contrivance used in Asian cooking is also on the shelves here, from familiar woks to stuff like Indonesian coconut graters, sandy-textured sha bao tureens for braising, and convenient double-boilers called dun tang that can make entire soup recipes.
When Seafood City opened its new doors, just walking through them unequipped with epicanthic folds could get you some long looks. No more. St. Louisans of all shapes and colors are shopping here. A Friday night at Seafood City, even without Gene Autry whining on the Muzak, is one of the most enjoyable dates you’ll have, trust us. Even if you don’t go home with any of that pork bung.
Seafood City. 7733 Olive Blvd., University City. 314-721-6688.
