A Midwestern guy walks into a Filipino Supermarket and gets overwhelmed. Film at 11. Wow, this was one of the more interesting places I've stepped foot into since I moved to Vegas. Parking for this place is a zoo but once you find a space you're in for an experience.
Once inside the door the place reminds me of a Hypermarket with restaurants, a bakery, financial services, and other shops right up front. You walk past all that and into a full fledged supermarket where the first thing you notice is the smell coming from the fish which you can't see at first but you certainly know they're present. This is not your typical American supermarket. It may look like it at first glance, but it's certainly not. So what did I find here?
Produce: They have a good selection but the pricing for some items is a bit higher than I expected. Also the produce section had a LOT of flies. As in even as oblivious as I am to some things when I notice it's pretty bad. But they had some stuff like different varieties of bananas that I haven't seen elsewhere.
A quick loop around the store will take you to the source of the very distinctive smell, the open air fish market. They have a nice sized selection of fish and other things and after you pick out what you want they will clean it up for you. This section of the store is CROWDED. Even a big guy like me got bumped into. And if you don't like raw fish this is not the place for you as people are flying past you with all kinds of it. I overheard grumbling about how long it was taking to process the fish but I just thought it was cool and I want to go back when I can properly transport my fish home in the desert heat.
A walk through the center of the store led me to a lot of different ethnic items, some I've seen at the International Market but quite a few items were unique to this store. The list of unique items is too long to list here, if you're looking for something your best bet is to stop in and look for yourself. I picked up a couple of things (they even had the tamarind hard candy I have trouble finding!) and went to check out. Checkout was packed but moved fast. And the people working the registers were friendly and they actually have a Point of Sale / Credit Card machine that's programmed intelligently. I want to make a point of saying checkout was easy, as it should be elsewhere.
In short I didn't have much time to spend in here but I'm glad I went in and it was quite the experience. I will be back.