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| - Tops has been around for quite a few years and the store started out with different owners and a different name but has always been a Chinese grocery store. Don't go if you're expecting a Co-op or Safeway grocery shopping experience, shopping at TOPS is not for the faint of heart. Tops Supermarket is like being transported to a typical food store off a street in Hong Kong. Chinese food stores maximize every square inch of space they can so no super wide grocery isles where 2 carts can easily pass each other, lot of crates and boxes of stuff stacked where possible, mostly Chinese signs with usually understandable English translations (but don't count on it); fruit and vegetables that you should pick through carefully because if you buy bruised ones that's your problem; staff that only understand basic transaction English so heaven help you if there's been a mistake and you need a refund or to dispute that they rang in the wrong item because there is no customer service desk. A true foodie though will find it an adventure because it is full of staples generally stocked in a Chinese kitchen. You will find cough syrup stuck on a shelf among soy sauce and other condiments, an aisle marked Japanese foods but full of anything that is not necessarily a regular item sought by the Chinese so you really have to go through the store aisle by aisle to check out everything. The BBQ section has undergone a change so right now I can't say if it's good or bad, the prices have crept up and run by an independent BBQ business that only takes cash, the meat section is also now part of the store versus being run by an independent butcher, and the seafood store has not been there for a long, long time. The mall that Tops is in houses a restaurant and several other businesses from frozen dim sum to a Chinese candy/snack store to clothes and a tea shop. It is a busy mall especially on the weekends. The parking used to be more of a nightmare to get in and out but they have streamlined it by designating a specific entrance and exit. The selection of items overall is smaller but I do find that they have a better selection of the rarer Asian fruits such as jackfruit, rambutan, mangosteens, (all when they are in season, of course) than I have seen at other Asian stores. They don't bring them in in bulk but at least they have them when they can.
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