Chung Chou City Inc.蟲草城海味店

In Chinese cooking, a bowl of piping hot soup simmered for hours can be both nourishing and medicinal. This large store sells as wide range of dried foods including dates, fat choy, and fish stomach, said to soften facial skin.

Address: 1230 Stockton Street

Hours: 9 am-6 pm

Phone:  (415) 986-2288

Website: https://www.chungchoucity.com 

Vegiland Market 橙地蘇果店

This stores sells a range of fruits and vegetables. For the new year, people purchase gifts, plants, and decorations as symbols of wealth, luck, and happiness. People buy oranges, a popular symbol of good luck which can also represent happiness and abundance, as in an abundant harvest.

Address: 1055 Stockton Street

Hours: 7:30 am-6 pm

Phone:  (415) 834-9928

Cash only

Dai Lee Food Inc. 大利超市

Chinatown resident Qiu Ping Guan prefers shopping in Chinatown as opposed to a supermarket.  “There are more stores in Chinatown so you have the option of comparing goods.”  Dai Lee Food Inc. stocks a variety of foods for traditional Chinese dishes including chicken, shrimp and glass noodles, rice dumpling flour for tong yun rice ball desert tong yun, a dessert whose name suggests unity, perfection, and completeness, and stir fried vegetables, that represent the liveliness and good feelings that come with the New Year.

Address: 878 Washington Street

Hours: 8 am-6 pm

Phone:  (415) 362-4326

Cash only

Chang Hong Meat Market

長鴻肉類孖結

For holidays like the Lunar New Year, families serve a lot of fish and meat dishes – as it is a symbolic wish with so much food that everyone in the family will have enough to eat in the coming year. This market sells a range of meats, including lamb and pig knuckles. For the new year, Chinatown resident Wei Ling Yu cooked a dish of marinated pig knuckles with fat choy, a black algae-like moss with the appearance of black hair.  “Almost every family makes this dish for New Year’s dinner,” she explains. “It has a wonderful saying associated with it: wang choy jou shou.  A pig knuckle represents the idea that fortune and prosperity are within arm’s reach.”

Address: 1335 Powell Street

Hours: 8 am-6 pm

Phone:  (415) 265-2687

Cash only

New Ocean Seafood 新海洋海鮮

“For Chinese New Year dinner, we like to cook fish,” Chinatown Gui Fang Zeng she explains. “Fish is associated with the Chinese saying, nien nien you yu, ‘every year there is something left over’ (you never run out). Similarly, we also like to cook shrimp because it means that from the start of the year to the end of the year, everyone in the family is laughing throughout.”  This store sells fresh whole fish with the tail and head still intact, as the body of the fish represents family unity or togetherness. Shoppers can also get live rock cod at Luen Fat Fish Market on 1135 Stockton Street.

Address: 838 Jackson / 838 傑克遜街

Phone:  (415) 788-3608

Cash only

Ming MING STORE 永明食物市場

MING MING STORE is one place to behold a wide variety of Chinese candies, dried fruits, snacks, and grocery items. Before Asian supermarkets opened up throughout the Bay Area, Chinatowns were one of few places to buy Asian snacks and candies. Many Chinese Americans have fond memories of eating chewy white rabbit candies, sweet nickel-sized wafers called haw flakes, and salted plums or mui and olives or lomm. Mui have a special place in people’s hearts, particularly those who witnessed in Guangzhou vendors dressed as clowns in rooster costumes, tossing brightly-wrapped mui up three stories in the air to customers waiting in their windows. Ming Lee Trading Company sells dried fruits and candies includes tung gwa tong, a winter melon candy, and chun guang, a classic coconut hard candy. Chinese tradition calls for eating dried fruits and seeds as they symbolized wealth, long life and family. During the lunar New Year, families display eight-sided trays with traditional seeds and fruits such as preserved kumquats, plums, sweet melon pieces, sugared coconut slices, red dates, and red-colored melon seeds. During the lunar New Year, visiting guests are offered this tray, called a chuen hop, which is a homonym for "everyone gathered together" and/or "everyone in harmony." If young kids in the family serve this tray, they are sure to receive a lai see or lucky money. 

Signature items: Candies including white rabbit candy and haw flakes as well as dried fruits, drinks and other products.

Address: 759 Jackson / 759 傑克遜街

Hours: 9 am-6:30 pm
Phone: (415) 217-0088

Cash only