Dragon fruit

Chinese eggplant

Bitter melon

Photos by KYLE GREEN The Roanoke Times

J&L Oriental Food Mart owner Li Wang (behind counter, left), checks out customers during a rush the store experiences every Wednesday night when a fresh shipment of Asian vegetables and assorted foods arrives from Washington, D.C.

KYLE GREEN The Roanoke Times

Anthony and Rohani McNeeney shop at J&L Oriental Food Mart in Roanoke. "We love the variety and freshness of the products here," says Anthony McNeeney.

Food writer Lindsey Nair

• lindsey.nair@roanoke.com | (540) 981-3343

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Stepping inside J&L Oriental Food Mart on a Wednesday evening is like entering a bustling city marketplace in a foreign land.

The aisles of the Brambleton Avenue store are jammed with shoppers of all nationalities who come to see what treasures Jin Hui Ren has brought from Washington, D.C., that week.

Last Wednesday, Ren arrived with boxes of fresh, exotic produce such as bitter melons, baby bok choy, Japanese eggplants, dragon fruit and ripe lychees. His daughter Cathy, 14, also helped him stock fresh chicken, tofu, hot Vietnamese sandwiches and sweet pastries, which all came from stores and wholesalers in Northern Virginia.

"We love the variety and freshness of the products here," said Roanoker Anthony McNeeney, a U.K. native who shops at J&L with his Indonesian wife, Rohani. The McNeeneys stopped in to buy some silk squash, which they planned to stir-fry with blazing hot chiles.

Open-door policy

Ren and his wife, Li Wang, are originally from China. They opened their first Roanoke store in 2001 but have since moved to the larger, 3,000-square-foot store beside Papa John's.

Wang said their customer base is made up mostly of Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Thai shoppers, but they also have customers from Middle Eastern or African countries. Increasingly, she said, Caucasians are also coming in for specialty ingredients to cook ethnic dishes at home.

That hunger to experiment is also driving business at other Asian grocery stores in Southwest Virginia. Overall, the number of ethnic markets in Roanoke has multiplied in the past 20 years.

"When we first came, we had to go to Blacksburg to buy our Chinese groceries," said Pearl Fu, who moved to Roanoke 21 years ago, "and now there are so many Chinese groceries."

Son Lee, who owns the Oriental Food Market on Peters Creek Road, said her customers are mostly Korean, but that is changing.

"American people like Oriental food these days," she said. "I know a little bit more than Kroger does."

After taking an Asian cooking class, Mary Smart, who grew up in Patrick County in the "Paula Deen school of cooking," is now a regular at J&L.

"I am very adventurous with my food," she said. "Where else are you going to see these vegetables in Roanoke?"

But Smart admits that, just like me, she was a little nervous when she first walked into an ethnic market.

My first experience years ago was at Oriental Market on Williamson Road, which smelled wholly unfamiliar and was stocked with foods I had never seen in my life.

I knew about rice and fish sauce and bamboo shoots, but what was I supposed to do with tiny fish packed into a jar? Or mung beans? Or galanga root?

I feared that I would look out of place in the store and that my questions would go unanswered because of language barriers. Smart told me she worried about offending someone or coming across as an "ugly American."

In reality, the owners of ethnic markets are just trying to make a living like any other entrepreneur. They are extremely welcoming and willing to help, especially if you've brought along a recipe or a cookbook.

"I just go forward and say whatever I have to say and assume that they can understand it," said Fu, who organizes the annual Local Colors festival in Roanoke. "And if they don't, I speak slower and more precisely. When you are friendly and smiling, they open up. They love people but they are scared, too."

Smart took that approach when she first ventured into J&L.

"Li was so good, taking me all around the store and showing me things," she said.

From seafood to sauces

For the curious food lover, there's a lot to see in any Asian market.

The stores carry a huge array of noodles, from rice stick (which is used to make pad Thai) to Chinese cellophane noodles. Anyone struggling with gluten intolerance can find a world of wheat-free noodle and flour options in these markets.

Another big draw are the jarred and canned goods, which range from pickled fruits and vegetables to myriad brands of hot sauce, soy sauce and prepared sauces, such as hoisin and plum sauce. That's also where you'll find fish sauce or oyster sauce, which are both essential ingredients in many delicious Asian dishes.

Far East cuisine traditionally includes a lot of seafood, so Asian markets tend to stock frozen fish, clams, mussels, eels, squid, jellyfish, shrimp and scallops. If you're lucky, you can occasionally find live blue crabs or great deals on frozen Alaskan king crab legs.

The fresh vegetables are not always Asian varieties. J&L, for example, has competitive prices on peaches, plums, mangoes, peppers, onions, garlic and ginger. The store also carries fresh herbs, such as cilantro and Thai basil.

If you don't know where to begin at an Asian market, consider Chinese dumplings, or potstickers. They are sold frozen in most Asian markets and require little more than a frying pan, some oil and water to be transformed into a tasty hors d'oeuvre.

After that, keep experimenting with stir-fry dishes or Thai standards such as pad Thai, green curry or peanut chicken. Coconut milk, a popular ingredient in Thai food, is often much cheaper in ethnic stores than at chain grocery stores.

After conquering the basics, you may find yourself eyeing fresh tofu and baby bok choy with extreme interest. You might even take to snacking on toasted watermelon seeds or shrimp chips and roasting a head-on duck just to impress your guests.

When you become a regular like Mary Smart, Wednesday will no longer just be hump day. It'll be the day you look forward to stopping by J&L after work, just to see what Jin Hui Ren has brought back from the capitol this time.

Do you have a favorite Asian market in Roanoke? Get on the blog to share an experience or a recipe with the rest of us.