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Asia Market brims with exotic appeal Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Barbara Fleeger of Talent shops for fish sauce at the Asia Grocery Market in Medford. Restaurant tie-in raises Medford store from slump By Dani Dodge Instant seafood soup and sweet pickled scallions. Salted duck eggs and seasoned spicy cod roe. Spring roll wrappers and papaya pickles. Asia Grocery Market is crammed with enough exotic fare to make a true foodie swoon. Tucked away in a tiny hidden strip mall between a car wash and the old Kmart store on Barnett Avenue in Medford, Asia Grocery Market has been serving the area�s Asian food needs for 10 years. Business: Asia Grocery Market. Address: 225 E. Barnett Road, Medford, in the old Kmart plaza. Phone: 734-7356. Owner: Tae K. Kang. Hours: 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday; 12 to 6 p.m. on Sundays. Products: sells wide variety of Asian foods, cooking utensils and dishes, as well as a smidgen of Mexican edibles. But it�s not just a place for the Korean native who misses his home town delicacies. It�s a smorgasbord for creating the exquisite. Taro root for making Hawaiian poi. Crispy panko flakes for crunchy fried shrimp. Red chilies, galanga and lemon grass for a perfect Thai soup. For the Sushi chef, there�s dried seaweed, the tiny bowls for dipping, and at least six different kinds of bean curd wrappers for those little rice pockets. There�s wasabi up the wazoo, including 2-pound bags of the hot Japanese mustard � enough to blow the roof off any Japanese meal. Dawn Manzano and her daughter Jordan, 10, went to Asia Grocery Market recently to pick up some dried mango and a bag of jasmine rice. "I always get my Jasmine rice here," Manzano said. "You can smell it better than the kind in the bag at the regular grocery store." Manzano, who works at one of those regular grocery stores also likes to buy snacks for her daughter at the Asian market. Sometimes they just look for interesting-looking packages even though the Oriental writing gives them few clues to what�s inside. "I don�t have any idea what the names of this stuff is," Manzano laughed. "But it�s fun, and they have healthier snacks for kids." Asia Grocery Market owner Tae K. Kang came to the United States from Korea back in 1984. Already armed with a college degree from Korea, he moved to Eugene to study chemical engineering at University of Oregon. But the language barrier proved to be more difficult than he�d imagined. Additionally, he had his wife and two children to support. When the owner of an Asian grocery store in Eugene decided to sell out in 1987, Kang dropped out of school and bought into the food business. "We had a lot of customers," Kang said. "We opened this one after Eugene." The man with the thick accent and movie-star smile eventually sold the Eugene store and now operates only the Medford market. "I like small cities," he said. "Medford is a really nice size for me." But times have been rocky for the small grocer. When Kmart closed in 1996, the traffic that used to pass his shop suddenly slowed. Business dropped by 45 percent. Kang cleared out part of the grocery store, put up a divider, and opened a restaurant: Kazuki�s. "That�s brought more people in," Kang said. "We�re back up to almost the same amount." He said in addition to increasing the foot traffic, the restaurant has another benefit for the store: People who eat the delicious prepared food want to know how to make the same meals at home. "They ask me the recipe," Kang said. "And we show them so they can try their own." He said he loves his business. "The difference between American grocery store and Asian, is (customers) don�t know what it is," Kang said. "We can explain it person-to-person. "Then I have regular customers forever." Lola Miloan is one of those regulars. She wandered through recently filling her red basket with potstickers, yakisobi and instant noodles that she says "are like ramen except cheaper." "I�ve been coming here for years," the retired registered nurse said. "After a trip to China, I thought I�d keep my hand in it. "It makes for fun and different ethnic dining." And the Asia Grocery Market is Milhoan�s ticket to exotic edibles. On her way out, she passes broiled eel, shrimp crackers and bean threads. She browses an entire shelf aisle devoted to soy sauce, and a row of canned goods that includes four types of canned jackfruit. And you�re not going to find that on your canned food aisle of Safeway. Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA