Noshing with Sandi: H Mart Korean food court

 

H Mart grocery store food court, 7725 Balboa Ave San Diego, CA 92111

It’s very popular for grocery stores in Asia to rent out stalls to little restaurants that are independently owned, and the new H Mart in Kearny Mesa follows that model.  Traditionally each stall would have a single specialty and for your meal you might collect something from a variety of stalls.  That’s what we decided to do during our visit.  It was a little bit of a challenge navigating the pork filled waters as so many dishes have pork in them, but fear not, we found some great “kosher style” items.

One of the stalls that people were excited about and that was getting a lot of mentions online was a hot dog on a stick stall.  These are not your normal American corn dogs though.  The options ranged from a premium hot dog, to a cheese stick, to a rice dog, to a stick of mazzarella cheese with potatoes all around it.  There was even a “squid” dog which had squid ink in the batter.  Obviously as that’s straight traif we didn’t get that, but I mention it only to get the image of the American style corn dog out of your head.  To make it even more different, they had a variety of sauces like Thai chili and mustard cheese.  And to add to the novelty, each corn dog is rolled in sugar after it comes out of the fryer.  The dough was also heavier and more donut like than what we would normally think of.

It was an interesting mix of flavors.  We got a couple of the cheese dogs (no meat) and the rice dog (no meat).  The rice dog had Mochi or rice gluten as the core and tasted like a donut on a stick with a chewy center.  I actually really liked it.  Shor thought it was interesting.  The mazzarella potato dog had a core of mazzarella and pieces of potato on the outside.  It was rolled in sugar and then you could dip it in a variety of savory sauces.  The sweet and savory flavor combination is really popular in Asian cuisine.  I’m not a huge potato fan though, so while it was interesting to taste, I don’t know that I would get that one again.  Then there was the cheddar jack dog.  That one was like a donut with cheese in it.  Not bad, but I don’t know I could do it all the time.  Or, as Shor called it “Korean fair food”.

We also went to the wings stall and got some seasoned chicken wings* and some regular wings.  The seasoned wings had a sweet/spicy glaze that I liked, but Shor wasn’t crazy about.  He did like the regular wings though.

Once we finished our meal in the food court we went into the grocery store itself.  It’s always fun to go into an Asian market because it’s at the same time the same and very different from an American one.  Like Costco they had lots of sample stations, but the food being sampled was very different.

There was some Asian fruit like pitaya, summer melon, and golden kiwi.   There was wasabi and fish eggs, there was grilled sea bass, a sparkling yogurt drink, wontons, and many other things.  Then there are samples just sitting in the middle of the aisles for anyone to take.

I would highly recommend taking a trip to H Mart for anyone who has an explorer’s heart.  It’s cheaper than going all the way to Korea, and all the signs and labels are in English.There’s very much a feeling of this is different than “home.”  The food court offerings are different and fun, and if there’s nothing there that strikes your fancy, there’s also a Korean style French bakery there as well, so if nothing else you can enjoy a chocolate croissant or a fruit tart.

As for the food, I’ll give it an 8.5 – I think that it was good for what it was supposed to be, even if it’s not completely my taste.

*
As I’ve mentioned in previous columns, because chickens don’t give milk, I believe that eating them with dairy does not violate the Torah prohibition against seething a kid in its mother’s milk.  Traditional Jews, of course, will disagree.

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Masori is the food and restaurant reviewer for San Diego Jewish World.  When she’s not hanging with her kids or trying new places to eat, she’s busy helping aspiring authors self-publish their books.  If you want to reach Sandi either for a review or to talk about self publishing she can be reached at sandimasori@gmail.com