It's also a joy to wander around and discover new foods from all over the world - fresh lychee, frozen puffed tofu, salted puffed mung beans, and soursop juice are all things I only got to try because of H-Mart or Lotte. Their seafood selection is also incredible.
We live in the San Francisco Bay Area so there are a LOT of international supermarkets!
We found Indian, Mexican, South American, Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Middle Eastern - but my favourite ended up being the Korean Kukje supermarket in Daly City.
Eventually we realized that the trick is to go with at least one recipe in mind, which turns it into a more structured effort to find those ingredients (and then impulse buy lots of other interesting things).
(US bento boxes are amusing. There's a chain restaurant near me which offers them, but they're super-sized, the size of a cafeteria tray.)
There's a lot of things that I have no idea what they are but also a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables. The place is big.
Fortunately, we have alternatives, including really good Vietnamese markets in Dorchester and the Patel Bros in Waltham Mass -- still very old school, very cheap for produce, and lots of really special things you can't get elsewhere.
Later I've found out it is used for ritual burning and, since that is difficult to obtain in an urban setting, online retailers are selling it too.
Even found a review on Amazon of a person complaining that it tasted terrible.
It seems like a micro-agression (not sure what word to use) that Safeway, Lucky's, Vons, etc are "grocery stores" but 99 Ranch, K-Mart, Pacific Supermarket are "Asian Grocery stores". Effectively, you're "normal" if you go to a "grocery store" but you're abnormal if you go to an "asian grocery store".
I think they should rename/reclassify the "mostly based on European culture groceries stores" as something a little less "this is the norm".
This is especially true in majority Asian areas since going to Safeway, Lucky's, Vons, etc is probably not the norm.
https://bestneighborhood.org/race-in-san-francisco-ca/
And, even though I know there will be lots of downvotes, it sure would be nice to hear some argument for why this doesn't matter. It's effectively telling people they're foreigners. If you weren't a foreigner you'd go to the "grocery store" but because you're not really part of here you go to an "asian grocery store". It's pretty clear, at least to me, the one of those is considered the "norm" and other the exception and it follows there's a judgement there.