Chinatown

While chinese food has never been my favorite food, I do need my noodle soup once in a while. Woke up to a gorgeous sunny Sunday, I decided to take the bus and venture out to Chinatown. The Chinatown here is actually quite out of the way, in the barrio called Belgrano, and it barely makes it on my BsAs map. Nonetheless, the bus took way less than I thought and pretty direct. Looks like future noodle soup cravings won't be a huge problem to solve.

BsAs' Chinatown is quite small, it's only 2 blocks and 1 across of chinese stores, restaurants and supermarkets. After my más o menos (so so) bowl of noodle soup (wasn't the kind of noodle I was hoping for), it was time to do some shopping. Within this tiny Chinatown, there are 3 very good sized supermarkets. That's a lot for this tiny town but from the traffic I saw today, no wonder they have 3. Everyone of them was jammed with mypeople, non-mypeople and tourists, and they all were buying LOTS. Bags of raw meat, crabs, big fish (big as in the length of your whole arm) and huge amount of vegetables. Looked like everyone there runs a restaurant and it was time to stock up.

The shopping experience was quite chaotic. With only a basket in hand, you couldn't believe how hard it was to go from one end of an aisle to another, not to mention to get to another one: people with loaded carts in every 3 steps just wouldn't budge, kids were RUNNING around, many were taking their time to examine every piece of products while being totally oblivious to making space for others to pass, and for some, they basically decided to knock you out of the way to get to what they wanted...sound familiar? If so, you've definitely shopped at a chinese supermarket before! Don't I miss that! I guess something never change no matter where in the world you are.

That being said, however, I have to say I was quite impressed with the products they have there. Despite of not carrying the red vinegar for dumplings and a particular type of noodle, they can definitely live up to the expectations of being the real chinese supermarket. From many different kinds of chinese sauces to spices and from very asian-specific beverages to snacks like Pocky, they have them all. They even carry some Japanese, Korean and Thai food as well. Last but not least, they have bubble tea! I haven't been a crazy fan of bubbletea for years but today, after a very tiring shopping episode, the bubble tea being sold right at the exit looked extaordinary yummy, and it was exactly the sugary fix that I needed.