Sasha Elenko, Co-Content Editor
It doesn’t look like much: a worn-down shack, held together with Elmer’s glue in the middle of a lopsided parking lot on 12th and Jackson М — a block known as the “Little Saigon” of the International District.
In fact, when I took the bus up to Viet-Wah the other day, I nearly missed my stop.
But when I finally found my way through the (barely) automatic sliding glass door, I knew I had found my inner salvation.
To my right — inexplicably — was a turnstile that led from the main grocery store to a smaller section containing various medicinal herbs and fungi. No tickets were required. Naturally, that was the first place I ventured.
Next to the turnstile was a glass display case, serving as a barrier between the two halves of the store. On top of the case were 14 large glass jugs, each holding a different dried fruit, salted root, or bathing suit (or at least something equally random).
Of course, I bought a little bit of everything.
My favorites were the pink ginger — pickled, dried, and salted — the dried kumquats, and the dried plums in their multiplicitous flavors. In full disclosure, however, I probably couldn’t identify most of the other choices anyways.
One of them was particularly anomalous. It came in wedge-shaped chunks, with a wood-like texture. The chunks were dark brown and covered in some sort of white seasoning. It tasted a bit like licorice, but was also highly mentholated. Even my mother, a career naturalist, was befuddled. At one point, hawthorn berries came up as a possible identity, but by that point, we figured we had spent enough time deliberating on the matter.
The main section of the grocery store was even more esoteric.
In the next aisle over from the cherimoya fruit, durian, and longan berries were the packaged meats (if you could call them that). They included “fish balls,” consisting of about three hundred different types of fish, including cuttlefish (needless to say I wasn’t able to eat more than one “fish ball”); cooked, salted duck egg yolks, vacuum packed by the dozen; and half-gallon bags of dried anchovies.
Though it took about 20 items before I found one I would purchase again, I would still go back to Viet-Wah, just to get 20 more.