The New Asian Shopping Center in Plano

[Kevin72]

Did a little window shopping at the brand-new Asian center in Plano, just a few blocks from my house. Went to the Asia World Market first. While not as big as it appears on the outside (like the one at Park and Coit, there's little kiosks and such when you get inside, before you get to the grocery store) it's still more spacious than the Park/Coit one, I think. Much better organized: one whole aisle is just soy sauces! The meat and seafood counters are really amazing. There's large aquariums with labels on them for each kind of seafood they'll be keeping live: one tank had abalone written on it, another was for clams, another for live scallops! When we were there, they had a tank of crabs, lobster, perch (I think) and, ulp, live softshell turtles. Poor guys.

Afterwards we had lunch at the Pho place a few doors down. I guess it must be some sort of chain since the place was really done up and had a glossy menu with photos of each menu item. I had (my first) Vietnamese sandwich with pork and it was tasty. My wife samples another stock Vietnamese fave of ours: vermicelli with barbecued pork and egg roll. Unfortunately, the noodles here were ice cold, overcooked, and mushy. Mixed bag.

Finally, we enjoyed another first for us, some bubble tea next door.

Two more restaurants are about to open up: Little Szechuan and a sushi place. A few more storefronts haven't been filled. But this looks like it'll be a neat place to spend a weekend afternoon.

[planojim]

I went there today.

Wonderful. Everything in the store was clearly labeled on the shelf in both Chinese and English. All the produce, meat, fish, frozen food, all in English and Chinese.

They sold pigs blood there. The sold pig uterine. Pigs feet. Pigs ears. Pigs heart. all manner of pigs.

They also had beef (eye of round) sliced really really thin that I use to make cheesesteaks.

Decent Chinese beer selection too.

[Kevin72]

I had forgotten to plug that they carried the pig's blood which was very impressive to me, also. Business appears to be robust there; the parking lot has been packed every time I go by. Yesterday I bought some boneless pork shanks for dinner there and they were quite cheap! They also are alot more accepting of payment methods than the one at Park and Coit, where they've given me a hard time before for not paying cash for something less than $20.

[Richard Kilgore]

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, Kevin. I'll try to stop there this weekend.

[Richard Kilgore]

Had lunch with Kevin and his wife at Little Szechuan on Saturday (the tasty garlic eggplant was my favorite dish), and then Kevin and I did the Asia World Market. My great find was fresh "Chinese style" sausage. Steam it for 20 minutes. Incredible! This alone would make it worth a trip.

[Kevin72]

That sausage is amazing. I'd never had it before or even seen it.

Another great bargain is the "pieces missing" duck in the frozen bin. They were 3.99 ea and the "piece missing" on mine were the head and entrails. I was expecting maybe a missing leg or wing or something.

[Kevin72]

Friday we checked out the new sushi place here. It had opened last weekend. Erm, the service situation could be only best described as "a cluster", as my wife would say from her own food service days. Food was brought out with no utensils, plates, or accompanying sauces. Servers had to be told and reminded a couple times to refill tea or drinks. Edamame were ice cold and mealy; hot sake was lukewarm. Sadly, I think we were getting the best service; at least five tables of customers left having been completely unacknowledged and every other table had the telltale furrowed brow, craning necks, desperately waiting for someone to stop by.

Sushi was unremarkable. Maybe give it 2-3 months to level off and find its groove if you go at all.

Another Chinese place has also completely snuck in under the radar in a corner of this center. Given that these places all seem to be having rough service patches right after opening, though, I still will probably wait a while this time before checking this one out.

[mfindfw]

New San Dor is a new Hong Kong Style/Cantonese restaurant in this shopping center. Opened about 3 weeks ago. It's fantastic. Have eaten there 3 times now. Excellent Peking Duck, steamed flounder with soy & scallions. Don't miss the crispy garlic chicken. One of the best chicken dishes I've had in a very long time. Don't usually get excited about chicken, but I can't stop thinking about this dish.

[Kevin72]

I tried San Dor for lunch yesterday. I wanted to order one of their flat noodle dishes, but the server told me that it would be 20 minutes to make and recommended a crispy noodle with brown sauce dish instead. Without thinking, I agreed, then once it was served remembered that I don't like these crispy noodle dishes. My wife, however, did order the crispy chicken dish. That's quite a feast! Perfectly moist and well-seasoned. I wouldn't mind giving this place another go, but as of right now I liked the Szechuan place a little better.

Also, the grocery store continues to build up its stock. The freezer section was sparsely populated at first but is now pretty well filled up. There's whole eel in there, pork casings for sausage, frozen anchovies . . .

[Kevin72]

Little Szichuan(sp?) continues to impress. Did takeout here for dinner Sunday night and there wasn't a subpar thing I ate out of 6 items ordered. Check out the spicy eggplant for sure. I also had sweet and sour pork that didn't have that nuclear red goopy sauce and was very tasty and subtle instead. They have a cold shredded chicken app that is ferociously spicy and laced with a sesame tang afterwards.

[mfindfw]

Crepes For U - a small creperie in the atrium in front of the supermarket makes fantastic sweet crepes. Dinner at New San Dor followed by a crepe from Crepes For U is a perfect evening.

[Kevin72]

There's also an Indian place that just opened next to Little Szichuan. I hope to check it out soon.

[Kevin72]

We went to the India's Bistro place (I forgot the formal name) last night and had some of the better Indian food I've had in a while. The layout of the place, like most of the other restaurants except Little Szichuan, is beautiful and elegant. It looks like they do a buffet at lunch and then offer a menu dinner. The menu, our waiter told us, is still in its rough stages so there weren't descriptions for many of the items. Entrees come either ala cart with Naan and rice or "Thali Dinner" portion which means you get a soup, two curries, a dessert, naan and yogurt salad, and rice, all served in little individual bowls on a platter. I had some kind of lamb curry and my wife had chicken in a creamy spinach sauce. They do have "vegetarian" portion of the menu as well, and the staff there is pretty helpful in walking you through the menu and making recommendations.

[Kevin72]

As some of you may know, New San Dor here closed a few months back. I went to the shopping center yesterday and noticed a new sign up where NSD used to be: Dim Sum and Barbecue. I'm pretty pumped!

[jsmeeker]

I made it up here last weekend with a few other eGullet members. It was a first time visit for all of us. For me, it was the first time to visit a big Asian market like this. It was pretty interesting, especially all the packaged products. I've never seen so many soy sauces before!

[Kevin72]

Yeah, two aisles of soy sauces?! There's a Japanese only aisle, and then when you're done with that, just two aisles down, are the soys from remaining Asian countries. So I have a light (standard), dark, Indonesian (syrupy and sweet) and mushroom flavored. Fun!

I took a friend there last weekend too, early Sunday. They had whole pig's heads in the fridge case. Then I needed something for dinner later that day and went back and the heads were gone.

I would think the butchers there get the animal in whole and break it down. You can get every part of the pig there and once a year I go in to load up on their fat to make lard out of.

[Chris Amirault]

Jeff graciously took us to the Asian World Market last weekend, and that store was top-shelf. I won't repeat the positive comments elsewhere here, but wanted to add a few details I noticed.

There's lots and lots of locally prepared foods on the shelves, and a lot of it looks good: buns, noodles, sauces. Most of it is on end caps and side displays on the left before the produce section. And, on that note, they had the best yard long beans I've ever seen at a store: bright green, thin, beautiful.

The pork selection was wide, but the quality definitely varied: I saw some outstanding looking shoulder there but the bellies the day we visited didn't look very well marbled. Outstanding noodle and rice cake selections. If I were trying to get started on learning about sake, I'd start here. There was a very wide selection of different sake styles in small bottles.

My great find was fresh "Chinese style" sausage. Steam it for 20 minutes. Incredible! This alone would make it worth a trip.

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I know it was 18 months ago, Richard and Kevin, but can you say more about this? Was it packed in hog casings or sheep? Did it taste of liver? I'm very interested to know.

[Kevin72]

No, I remember it like yesterday. They disappeared shortly after we sampled them there; wonder if there was some kind of license issue that they had to meet or something because now they only sell prepackaged varieties in the produce section. I tried them but they lacked that fresh flavor.

The ones they made there were wonderful. Very fatty but in the right kind of way and had plenty of ginger and garlic in them. They didn't taste livery at all and were standard thick-linked sausages, not the little narrow breakfast sausage size and shape, so I guess that means hog instead of lamb casing, yes?

[Richard Kilgore]

Those were such wonderful sausages! I doubt it was a license issue, after all they do have a butcher shop and I am sure they breakdown pigs like most the Asian markets do. It may be they did not sell enough to make it worth doing. Whatever the reason, it's really too bad.

[Kevin72]

Just tried the Dim Sum place. Really good and fun. They ony do it for lunch on weekends; the rest of the time you would have to order it off the menu, or go with the barbecue they have hanging on display in the back of the room.