H Mart Long Island City

The tiny cramped locations in the city just can't compare the this behemoth. From the various food stalls to the eye catching bakery, wide isles and so so many options for every item you can imagine.

I used to live near here over 10 years ago and this location used to be a Stop N Shop supermarket. I saw that it's now an H-mart and I happened to be in the area so we stopped in to do some grocery shopping. This supermarket is so big and clean and everything is so fresh. When you first enter you're in the produce section and all the fruits and vegetables look picture perfect. I checked out the seafood section and they had tons of different fresh fish on ice. Surprisingly there was no fishy smell at all by the seafood section. The aisles were more than wide enough for 2 shopping carts to pass. Lastly, the bakery section smelled great and all the pastries and cakes in the display case looked delicious. I couldn't resist and got a couple of almond croissants to go.

The prepared food here is alright. Chicken rice bowl: For $8, this was pretty good. Extremely generous portion of chicken and rice. The chicken was very meaty, not particularly moist but it was tender and it wasn’t dry. Nice mix of light and dark meat. It was well seasoned but not salty. The main flavorings were sugar, mild chile and onion. It was sweet, a little sweeter than I would have liked, but not at all cloying and pretty typical for Korean cuisine. Rice was a little bit firmer than I like but overall very good. I got this at the end of the day, may have been even better at lunch time. Oh, and it was not spicy. Tteokbokki with fish cake: pretty standard, good but not special. Rice cakes were firm and chewy. Fish cakes were fine. The sauce was sweet but not excessively so. It was spicy, but not very spicy. Spicy tuna onigiri: I appreciate that this rice ball had a good amount of filling, but unfortunately it wasn’t really that spicy or flavorful. Stuffed inari: too sweet. Tiger sushi: I’m still not really sure what was in this roll, but it was okay. Gimbap: it’s fine gimbap, but could be a little more flavorful. Better when warmed up.

H Mart is a popular Korean grocery chain and the Long Island city branch is excellent because of its large scale, competitive prices, clean, and well maintained interior, and the food court that accompany it. I love the banchan (Korean side dish) section. Although they are a Korean grocery chain, they carry ingredients from Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, and other Asian cuisines.

We went to H mart after the movie. Google mentioned about their food court so the main reason was eating at there. But even though we visited on Sunday afternoon but few of stores in the food court area was shutterd. Only few other were open but I was expecting more stores, more choice. So we did some grocery shopping. It was very good. Korean rolled sushi was sooo tasty. The Japanese rice I got was an excellent quality. Usually I don't complain with the rice I buy from the non Asian market. But the Japanese rice I got from here was made my quality of life better really lol