Reviews & Raves About Bangkok Center Grocery

Zagats says its Chinatown back street address may be a "a little difficult to find," but this Thai market is "the place to go" for specialty foods. Surveyors report it's stocked with "treasures" like fresh kaffir lime leaves, "excellent curry pastes," canned and frozen coconut milk, lemon grass and imported herbs.

Fans add you can expect "really nice service" from folks who are "generous with advice" on real-deal preparations. Bangkok Center Market has yet to be rated, but it receives an "I" for inexpensive prices.

Source: Zagats New York City Gourmet Marketplace 2005

For anyone whose experience in cooking Thai food consists of opening a jar of Thai Kitchen satay sauce, this tiny shop is a revelation. The floor-to-ceiling shelves and cases are stocked with just about every hard-to-find ingredient you could want: fresh kaffir lime leaves, galangal, bird chilies, loaves of palm sugar, green golf-ball size eggplants, shrimp pastes, banana leaves and canned Asian fruits like rambutans, mangosteen and jackfruit. Once you try the potent fresh curry pastes from the refrigerator case (in red, green, massaman and jungle varieties), you'll never go back to the jarred stuff. For the even more ambitious, there are granite mortar-and-pestle sets to grind your own. But what really makes Bangkok Center a joy is owner Nong Premjit, who cheerfully explains ingredients, offers cooking tips and even stocks a pile of printed recipes near the cash register. —Sarah Breckenridge

Source: New York Magazine, Shopping & Style

The place is run by a nice lady named (Nong) Premjit, she stocks the place up with some truly amazing stuff. She's got several kinds of fresh curry pastes in her refrigerator that she flies in from Thailand, as well as frozen fresh coconut milk. She also has fresh galangal and fresh lemongrass, fresh thai basil and fresh kaffir lime leaves.

The fresh curry pastes and fresh coconut milk and galangal make a huge difference in cooking Thai food. I recently made a green curry with her paste and it came out amazing, but very hot, its very potent stuff compared to the jarred Maesri or Mae Ploy stuff thats generally available.

Source: Fat Guy at EGullet Food Forums

This place has every type of soy, hot, or otherwise Asian-style sauce you could ever dream up. But don't get too hung up on the sauces in the window, take a walk around and sample one of the great sodas (how does pine nut and honey sound?), or maybe you would like to purchase the coffee flavored peanuts? This place has a little bit of everything, so look around and buy something.

Source: New York City Block Review

If you are in the mood to fix a little spicy Penang Beef Curry or delicious Lemon Grass Soup, then this Chinatown market has all of the ingredients you need for your ambitious Thai culinary creations. Chili paste, exotic fruits, sticky rice and spices fill the shelves. The savory scent of herbs permeates through the store. For the less savvy chef, recipe books are available to guide you through your first meal.

Source: Tantalizing Thai Ingredients

The Bangkok Center Grocery in the heart of Chinatown carries hundreds of Thai exotic ingredients including fresh kaffir lime leaves, lemongrass, and galangal. They also specialize in imported Asian cookware such as sticky rice steamers and kanom krok pans. In addition, they import a plethora of Thai magazines, herbs, candies, frozen specialties and cosmetics. The smell, taste, and ambience of this grocery store is an inexpensive passport to Thailand. (Author: Sarah Egron)

Source: A Trip to Thailand

Five Points is at the intersection of today's Mosco, Worth and Baxter streets, and named for the intersection of the five streets that converged at the south end of what is now Columbus Park. Site of the city's first tenements, it was built to accommodate the massive immigration of Germans and Irish. Made famous by the Martin Scorcese film "Gangs of New York."

Located nearby the Five Points you will find Bangkok Center Grocery located at 104 Mosco Street (the short street toward the south end of Columbus Park, running between Mulberry and Mott Streets). Bangkok Center Grocery is a bright, clean and super-friendly market for everything you need to make delicious Thai cuisine.

Source: Five Points Chinatown New York

Located in Chinatown, this market is a specialty grocery with all Thai favorites. Address: 104 Mosco St New York NY USA 10013

Source: Manhattan Markets

The first stop was the Bangkok Center Grocery (104 Mosco Street, between Mott and Mulberry Streets, 212-349-1979), which, according to King, is the number one place in New York for Thai products; the store also ships Thai food all across the country. Perched on a quiet side street, the tiny market is jam-packed with rows and rows of curry, from sweet to sour, red to green, Panang to holy basil.

The shelves offer high-quality fish sauce like Golden Boy,, which King uses to sauté vegetables. Instead of just adding salt, fish sauce adds another layer of flavor, he explains, but he also warns against cheaper fish sauces sold in Chinese markets that are mainly just salt. Showing me the bottle in his hand, King says to make sure the ingredients read anchovy, fish extract, salt and sugar.

Other regional specialties you can find in the Bangkok Center include preserved coconuts, lychees and longan (which are the brown, cherry sized fruits sold on the vine all over Chinatown during the summer season, the skin of which you peel away to bite into a sticky grapefruit-tasting pulp).

Inside the refrigerators in the back of the store you'll find all of the produce you could ever want to make perfectly seasoned curry: lemongrass, Thai chilies, Thai baby eggplant (which look like berries and are used for garnish on curries), galanga (which is like ginger, but less pungent) and the rare limes and Kaffir lime leaves. You'll find the Thai basil is a refreshing combination of mint and basil, which King says makes a perfect sweet chili sauce. The store also abounds in quick tasty treats like tamarind candies, preserved mango, and scrumptious sticky rice with taro root and black beans wrapped in banana leaves.

Source: Stepping into the Markets of Chinatown: Train to be a Chef or Just Shop Like One, By: Amy Zimmer

Active cooking time also does not include the time spent searching for 104 Moscow Street (pronounced MOS-kah, at least by the half-dozen police officers you will have to ask to find it) a one-block thoroughfare buried deep in Chinatown that seems to exist just to provide an address for the miraculous Bangkok Center Grocery. There, for roughly the price that Whole Foods demanded I spend in exchange for a parking validation, I bought three 24-ounce bottles of fishy Thai sauces, a jar of shrimp paste, a pound of banana leaves, a bunch of Thai basil, five pounds of sticky rice and a small glassine bag of fresh Kaffair lime leaves, as well as the granite mortar and pestle I suppose some readers already have.

Source: The New York Times: On the Newsstand, a Menu Marathon By Julie Powell, May 26, 2004

Back to: Thai Grocery New York City

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