STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — To the crashes of a cymbal and gongs on a traditional tanggu drum, lion dancers shimmied and pranced through the aisles of Asian Foods on Saturday morning. The commotion delighted shoppers and workers at the Mariners Harbor supermarket at its official grand opening celebration at 2343 Forest Ave.
The festivities brought relief to owner Jonathan Chan, who opened the 9,990-square foot store earlier this year. This operation is almost six years in the making after a relocation from a South Avenue strip mall starting in 2018. His new digs serve as an anchor for the Roman Plaza, a sprawling new shopping complex that took developer Stuart Waldman seven years to complete.
Chan said, “We’ve been working on this site for so long. Stu was building it. Yes, we opened a couple of months ago but now all the departments are open — barbecue and the kitchen. Now we have a full service supermarket. There’s no need to go to Chinatown!”
Indeed, Asian Foods specializes in mostly Chinese pantry items. But the store has found favor among cooks who enjoy Korean, Filipino, Indonesian and Japanese fare.
Chan operates six stores with another on the way in East Brunswick. His Staten Island project has been a boon to the North Shore, he says, an easier trip than the former West Shore destination.
“This is more convenient for customers. A lot of our customers live around here,” Chan acknowledges. And it appeals to a wide swath of Staten Islanders excited about cooking with a range of ingredients new to them.
Marisol Roldos of Mariners Harbor enthused, “Oh, I love it., they have a diversity of foods. So I’m already a customer of the store. I’ve already made beef lo mein. I made wonton soup from scratch. Everything is fresh. And the meat — all the foods are very good prices.”
Her son loves the pork buns steamed to softness in the bakery department. Other recommendations from a broad range of shoppers include whole garlic chicken and hanging Peking ducks, both carved on a block by cleaver to order. For the adventurous looking to role-play Iron Chef, there are purple yams and durian fruit, dozens of frozen dumpling varieties plus hundreds of dipping and marinating sauce flavors.
Jackie R. of Midland Beach said, “We’ve been coming since Day One, even at the old location. Here you walk in and it’s neat and organized. It smells fresh. We even tried the hot food. I highly recommend the red bean buns. I usually get them right when they come out of the oven.”
She has learned to put the Chinese scallions in a cup of water at home. They grow in about a week when placed in the sun. This way, she gets a few uses out of a single purchase.
LION DANCING IN THE AISLES
On this rainy Saturday, her family happened to be on a routine shopping trip when they discovered the lion dancers would be performing at 10:30 a.m. Jackie’s five-year old son Jackson wanted to stick around for the show.
His mom said, “He has an appreciation for the Chinese culture because he learned it in school. Especially in these days it’s good for kids to be more culturally aware.”
STORE SPECIALS AND SALES
In celebration of the grand opening, there are a few store specials customers can score before April 9 when the sale ends. Spend $100 and receive a special cold pack, keepsake Asian Foods bag. Also, this week’s food theme for discounted bundles are “Chinese essentials.”
“It’s everything you would need at home,” said manager Shirley Chau.
She explained, “In the Chinese culture you need wood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar, tea and sugar. We don’t cook with wood, obviously, so I put butane in there. You use that for a portable stove. A lot of Chinese people use hot pot where they put the pot on a portable stove. That’s a staple at home for most people.”
Waldman, the landlord, came to the fete with his sons Ben and Joe plus other employees of Waldman Properties, located in offices just above the market. The company’s assistants Alexa Hidalgo and Bevzee Sierra snapped photos of the raucous dancing throughout the store.
The Chinese lion dance is meant to bring good luck and chase out evil spirits. Members of the Chinese Freemasons Athletic Club of Canal Street in Manhattan manned the colorful costumes of two beasts and a creature with a baby face. With an operator under each head and tail, the lions crouched and leaped.
They extended their colorful bodies to the ceiling to reach for lettuce dangling from a string. Their mouths gobbled up the greens and chewed them to shreds. They spat them onto the floor while the baby figure fanned the air. The lions battled in the prepared foods department, roared past the produce and frozen sections, then had a showdown in the midst of live seafood and its onlooking fishmongers.
THE ROMAN PLAZA HOME
When the clamor ceased, store workers swept up the confetti and lions’ mess. A few employees went back to filling pastries with cream and spooning sauteed cuttlefish into takeout containers.
Waldman said the next celebrations in the Roman Plaza would be openings of Teriyaki One hibachi restaurant and a dedication of the shopping mall itself. It is named after Holocaust survivor Roman Blum, a Staten Islander who passed away in his late 90s leaving no heirs to his real estate fortune. A little over six acres plays home to his legacy with a Popeye’s, Burger King, Phoenix Salon and Charlie’s Cheesesteaks as some of Asian Foods’ neighbors.
“We’ll team up with Wagner College on some of the Holocaust details,” Waldman said, adding he’ll have a plaque for Blum installed at some point in the near future.
Pamela Silvestri is Advance Food Editor. She can be reached at [email protected].
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