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I’ve been coming to this Asian shop for years and, although it’s pretty familiar to me now, every time I visit I still find new products that surprise me. It’s not that I’m a massive fan of Asian food, but I like trying different things, and this place has loads of interesting and different options. If you’re as curious as I am, read on because it’s well worth it.
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The first thing that caught my eye the very first time I went — and it’s still one of its highlights — is the frozen section. There’s a huge variety of stuffed meatballs, fish balls, gyozas, dumplings, and ready-made products you don’t tend to find in regular supermarkets. The prices are reasonable, and all the packets have a label in Spanish, which makes it much easier to know what you’re buying, even if the main packaging is in Chinese or Korean.
The sauces and condiments section is a treasure trove. They have everything from all sorts of soy sauce to mirin, rice vinegars, ponzu, sesame oil, and loads of bases for preparing dishes like ramen, mapo tofu, or hot pot. There are also ready-made sauces, ideal if you can’t be bothered with any fuss but still want to give your dishes an authentic flavour. Whenever I’m in this aisle, I usually end up grabbing a new sauce to try.
You can easily spend ages Browse the noodle and snack aisles. There are rice noodles, udon, countless types and brands of instant ramen, soba, and both dried and fresh noodles. And then there are the snacks: prawn crackers, dried squid, tofu strips, rice crackers, sweets with eye-catching packaging, and products that catch your eye before you even know what they are. There are sweets featuring characters like Shin-chan or kawaii pandas that are hard to resist, even if you’re not quite sure what they taste like.
The drinks section doesn’t disappoint either. They have everything from iced teas, Korean ‘ready-to-drink’ coffees, fermented fruit-flavoured drinks, melon milk, and soft drinks with aloe vera, right up to the classic Japanese Ramune drinks with the glass marble stopper. There are also Asian beers like Sapporo, Tsingtao, or Chang. The range is so wide that I always leave with something different to try.
Another of my favourite spots is the fresh veg section. This is where you can find daikon, okra, purple sweet potato, ginger, pak choi, Chinese cabbage, Chinese celery, chives, shiso, and other vegetables you’d normally only see in specialist restaurants. Everything is well-presented and reasonably priced. They even sell pre-packaged veg by weight, ready for cooking.
In addition, they have tinned goods, dried mushrooms, rice cakes, traditional sweets, Korean products (like spicy ramen, kimchi in large and small jars), and even kitchenware: chopsticks, bowls, rice cookers, ladles, and other utensils. Next to this section, there’s also a butcher’s counter and an area dedicated to all kinds of soy sauces. It’s easy to spend quite a while just Browse.
There’s also a small selection of Filipino products, which isn’t always easy to find in general Asian supermarkets. Mind you, if you’re specifically looking for Filipino items, I should mention that there are other places in Barcelona more focused on them, which I’ll be writing posts about soon.
The Yang Kuang Supermercados shop is located at 12 Passeig de Sant Joan, in the Eixample district of Barcelona, and if you’re interested in exploring different flavours, it’s definitely a place you’ll return to more than once. You don’t need to be an Asian food fanatic to enjoy what it offers: you just need to be keen to discover, try something new, or even find specific products that aren’t easily found in other shops.
After coming here for so many years, I can say it’s one of those places that doesn’t disappoint. There’s always something interesting, it’s clean, well-organised, and you can tell they have a constant turnover of fresh products. Ideal both for home cooks and for those who just want to grab a different snack or be surprised by some new flavour.