Chinese Grocery Stores in International City

This post has been long overdue.

Three years ago, I first posted about the locations of Asian Grocery Stores in Dubai, a few months after I arrived in the UAE, and had also created a Map of Asian Grocery Stores in Dubai that marked all the stores that I knew of.

However, I had neglected to pinpoint the Chinese grocery stores in International City. I had drafted a post in 2008 intending to do so but never finished it (bad me!).

Last month, I decided to revisit the stores in International City to make sure that they were still there and enlisted the help of a friend who, unlike me, can speak Mandarin (thus able to communicate with the shop assistants) and read Chinese (further able to identify un-identifiable Chinese food items).

My friend took me to the new Phoenix store (as opposed to the old Phoenix – both located relatively close to each other). At first glance, the new Phoenix appeared to be a reincarnation of another shop that I had visited in 2008 called Le Jia Jia. Thinking that they were one and the same, we didn’t bother to look for Le Jia Jia. But when I returned home and pulled up my old 2008 photo of Le Jia Jia and the 2011 photo of the new Phoenix, I can clearly see that the two are not the same!

Left: Le Jia Jia (2008 photo); Right: Phoenix (2011 photo)

I will just have to make another trek to International city to check out what Le Jia Jia has to offer. Let’s hope it won’t take me another 3 years to do so

On this recent trip last month, my friend LL and I visited three Chinese grocery stores: the new Phoenix, the old Phoenix, and Wen Zhou. I took a few photos of what the shops had to offer but apologies for the low quality of the photos – my camera ran out of batteries and I had to resort to my iPhone cam.

Our first stop was the new Phoenix Supermarket. OMG. Why had I not come here sooner?!

Many of the food items that I regularly bring back from NYC to Dubai could be found in this store. Things such as Chinese pork sausages, rice noodles, egg noodles, marinades and sauces. They had many, many – oh! so many – things that made a Chinese-food-deprived girl like me quite happy. I could even have bought a vacuum-packed Peking duck (see lower-right of photo below) and black-feathered chickens. They even have packaged jellyfish – yum!

Chinese Food Items

The vegetable and fruit section had some lovely garlic chives (top-left in photo below) that can only be found in specialty markets like this and the Thai groceries. Garlic chives are so versatile and are just great in dumplings, Vietnamese Spring rolls, stir-fries, for soup garnishes, and many other things. Raw or cooked, the mild garlicky taste of these chives are just wonderful and can’t be substituted properly by anything else. Regular chives? No way.

A bundle of garlic chives cost about 7 or 8 dhs – I lost the receipt so I can’t remember exactly. I love these chives so much I bought all the ones you see below. Haha – just kidding! I only bought one bunch and that lasted me, no lie this time, a month of careful rationing. Yeah, I don’t know how they lasted so long in my vegetable drawer but I don’t ask these kind of questions. I just eat.

Chinese Vegetables and Spices

I also picked up a packet of salted eggs and a packet of century eggs. I have no idea what I will do with them but once I figure it out I will post the recipes and photos.

Left: Salted Eggs; Right: Century Eggs

Last but not least we visited Wen Zhou Supermarket which had many food items similar in selection to the new Phoenix.

Wen Zhou Supermarket

Worth a visit as well. I can’t read Chinese so didn’t know what many of the things were but I can tell you that the photo below contains pork sausages (great for fried rice!), seaweed, and an assortment of fishballs and meatballs – all Chinese style of course.

Wen Zhou food items

My son, Wee Scotch, decided to surreptitiously help with the shopping by throwing items into the cart when I wasn’t looking. Upon arriving home, I found mystery items like beef jerky, preserved vegetables, and candy in my shopping bag – at least they were things I liked and could use. He could have thrown in something like pigs ears or stinky tofu – then I would have been totally confounded.

Wee Scotch helping with the shopping

One thing that I will continue to transport from NYC would be dried Chinese mushrooms. The quality that I saw in the stores here in Dubai still leave much to be desired.

Please see my Google Map for locations to these three markets.

If there are any shops that I have missed, please let me know!