Thought I'd share an interesting shopping experience we had this weekend:

First, April needed some galangal root for a Tom Kha soup. She was going to hit Saigon Taipei in Garland, but I was looking for Johar Joshanda, a Pakistani tea that I'd recently seen recommended by a trusted source as a cure-all for sniffles, sore throats and the like. Teresa (whom I had on Gtalk) did some quick research and discovered that the tea was available at Al Markaz in Carrollton, so we reconfigured the trip to get the root at Super H-Mart.

Because Google's direction vis a vis hitting Trinity Mills from 35E northbound were less-than-precise, we wound up at Super H-Mart first. I'd highly recommend it for the ethnic shopping novice or the time-pressed, as it's as big, modern and full of domestic staples as any Tom Thumb. It also has a huge selection of (mostly US-grown) Asian produce and packaged goods. It also houses a mini-mall with clothing, vitamin, appliance, jewelry and furniture stores as well as a French bakery and food court. It's sparkling clean. If I lived closer, it would probably be my regular grocery. (Bonus points for being in the same shopping center as Teresa's rightly-praised Yogurtland.)

A short ways across Trinity Mills, we found the tea locked behind the counter at Al Markaz, which was more focused on Asian, specifically Indian and Pakistani goods than its larger counterpart. It also houses a restaurant that we didn't have time to try. They seemed perturbed that I wanted a whole box of the Joshanda rather than a couple of loose bags, but obliged, pulling it out from behind a stack of Pakistani romance novels. (Covers were just like Fabio-inspired American romance novels, but with more veils.)

The verdict on the tea is still out. Once you get over the fact that un-dissolved, it looks like cat litter, it's pretty tasty. I have a nasty cold and am also using a cocktail of nasal spray, decongestant tabs, lozenges and soups, so it's hard to isolate the individual effects. My gut is that the Joshanda is the most effective but shortest-lasting per dose of the myriad remedies.

Anyway, this adventure has inspired Teresa to put more ethnic grocers in our database. Hopefully we'll eventually get enough for a section and for user reviews to separate the soba from the ramen.