An Ode to Filipino-American Grocery Stores
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“We bring the haul back to our dorm rooms or our suburban kitchens, and we re-create the dish that couldn’t be made without our journey. What we’re looking for isn’t available at a Trader Joe’s. H Mart is where your people gather under one odorous roof, full of faith that they’ll find something they can’t find anywhere else.” — Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart
Grocery stores have been a topic of fascination for me in recent months. Some people find excitement in going grocery shopping, walking down the aisles and thinking about the wonderful meal that they are going to cook for themselves, but I’ve always dreaded the time of the week when I would have to drag myself out of the house and go food shopping. There’s always a matter of planning ahead of time what you’re going to buy, where you’re going to buy it, and when you are going to cook it. Of course, there are ways that I could get groceries delivered straight to my home, but that still feels like foreign concept to me, because I’ve spent my childhood helping out my mom cross things off our shopping list at the store.
The way that one moves through a grocery store can be one of the most revealing aspects of a person. In a grocery store, each purchase or decision that we make—deciding between brands or a matter of picking up a tray of cookies on the way out—is driven by our values, experiences with culture, and upbringing. That’s where behavioral economics comes into play. Social attitudes towards money can be passed down through a family line. Similar to the way we take on the traits of those closest to us, we can become “socialized” into certain habits of spending. For example, a family that experienced an economic crisis during wartime may have had very little to go around. The children raised in that environment may be more skeptical about the purchases that they make, and the children of those children may adopt behaviors of how one may adapt in a crisis, even if there is no crisis present. (LeBaron, 2021)
While my mom instilled the sense of strategic couponing in me (perhaps from her mother), in the case of my family, our Asian heritage and longing to experience those foods lead us to make weekend shopping trips both to the local Shoprite and to our local Asian market. There, you could buy the stuff you couldn’t find in the American grocery stores. My sister and I would watch the crabs run around the buckets while my mom ordered fish, and we’d look forward to treating ourselves to the Gina mango juice and strawberry Yan-Yan on the way out. In our town, there was only one Filipino grocery store, and it was about twenty minutes away from our house, so it was infrequent that we would selectively get Filipino food. We would have to drive all the way to North Jersey to obtain our pan de sal and black bean hopia from the grocery stores. Interestingly, even within the Asian grocery store closer to home, the Filipino stuff was tucked away into the corner. In the tiniest of ways, having claim to a small part of the grocery store contributed to my sense of being Filipino feel less real.
But the thing is when you walk into a Fil-Am grocery store, you know you’re in a Fil-Am grocery store. These places are typically small, family-run proprietaries with the mechanical buzz of ceiling fans whirling hot air overhead and a sense of hospitality in the air. You can find little pieces of the Philippines in things like ube-flavored biko wrapped in a clear plastic with a styrofoam base, colorful Boy Bawang cornic garlic snacks, and every kind of Cream Silk conditioner you can imagine, featuring a white-washed Filipino model. Funnily enough, next to the Cream Silk, you will often see an outdated calendar flipped to a serene-looking Santo Niño beaming down on you with his red cloak and golden crown. Sometimes, you’ll see that he is white-washed too.
After making our way through the aisles, my mom will direct us to the check-out counter where she quickly switches over to Tagalog and continues to chit-chat amiably with the attendant behind the counter. I don’t understand Tagalog that well because my parents don’t use it with one another — only with coworkers and strangers that you presume are Filipino. They will talk politely in Tagalog while ringing up the items until the inevitable, “Musulti ka ug bisaya?” happens, and all of a sudden, it’s like a flip switches and their tongues get looser with the peace of knowing they are in the presence of another Visayan.
Ninety percent of the time, they will suddenly turn their attention to me and say, “Taas kaayo ka ug gwapa!” or you are very tall and pretty, and they will tell me that I don’t look Filipino because I don’t have the classic flat nose. Even when I was around eleven or twelve, I was already pretty tall, and random Filipino people at grocery stores always felt the need to point it out to me. They’d tell me that if I went back to the Philippines, I could be famous, just based on my looks and just because I had an American accent. I could respond with what little Bisaya I knew, and they would immediately be charmed. Then, we’d leave the grocery store and come back in a month to restock on supplies: a new person waiting for us at the counter, with the same script.
Weirdly, even if we’re all from the same country, many Filipinos have a tendency to focus on what makes people different—which language, accent, sexuality, gender, religious affiliation, whether your skin was lighter or darker, and where you were born. But at the same time, the fact that we can all joke about our unique-yet-common internalized experiences with race creates an unspoken bond towards one another, even on the street. It’s just a grocery trip, and weirdly enough, it doesn’t end up being about the food, but rather, the feeling of finding a hidden piece of myself.
References
LeBaron, A. B., & Kelley, H. H. (2021). Financial Socialization: A Decade in Review. Journal of family and economic issues, 42(Suppl 1), 195–206. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-020-09736-2