Ami Y.
Yelp
I googled "Vietnamese grocery store" and this was the first store that came up, so I went. I wanted to try making pho at home so I was looking for the ingredients (I had pho earlier that day and I thought I'd forget about making pho at home, but it actually made me want to make pho at home even more. It would be nice if I could make it at home rather than having have to trek over to Flushing/Chinatown area every time I have a craving, which happens often).
The narrow aisles were packed with many sauce and ingredients that I've never heard of. It was a bit challenging to find the ingredients that I was looking for, but it was fun to explore and find interesting products. In the end, I was able to find two products that I was looking for - pho spice set with gauze pouch (with cinnamon sticks, cloves, and star anise) and pho noodles. It was most difficult to find the right pho noodles because there were so many. But when I asked the staff, he was very kind and let me know that I can choose from either the refrigerated wet noodles or the dry noodles. Staff's english may be limited but they were very much willing to help out, and I really appreciated the attitude.
The ingredients are all super cheap, similar to other supermarkets in Chinatown. Chinatown supermarkets tend to close early these days, so I recommend going in the morning if possible, especially since the neighborhood is packed on afternoon weekends. Credit card is accepted with $10+ purchase.
Also my mom and I were raving about how fresh the bean sprouts are - they are generally great quality if you get them in Chinatown compared to the packaged ones sold by Amazon Fresh or the Japanese grocery stores. The bean sprouts in Chinatown comes in bigger portion and are cheaper. Definitely recommend them 100%.