Mitsuwa
If you're ever in Edgewater, New Jersey, chances are you are there for one thing and one thing only: Mitsuwa Marketplace. As an Asian person living in New York City - with its three distinct Chinatowns (maybe more, depending on how you parse), Koreatown by Herald Square, and even a little Japantown near St. Mark's Place - I find Asian markets to be old hat so I'll be honest, I wasn't thrilled or eager to visit Mitsuwa, a Japanese market across two rivers from my house. I can go down 86th Street and have two Chinese supermarkets within a block of each other. Mitsuwa impressed me, though! It was definitely the cleanest Asian market I've been to. The aisles are wide and bright, and none of the packaged foods looked dingy or sketchy like some often do in my local markets. There wasn't an extensive butcher or seafood section, but you can probably find a section for everything else in your Asian dietary needs: tofu, dried fish, snacky-snacks. The biggest ...