Part 1:
Go to the neighborhood you choose and visit ( many not one) the following types of shops:
Greengrocer (produce market). their grocery store is a bit different from the one in Harlem where I live. they have a cultural grocery store. a lot of diverse vegetables and fruit. Also, Dry little fishes called are sold in their Grocery store too.
Restaurant. I visited this seafood restaurant that I can’t recall the name but they have the same restaurant taste as the one in Korean town. spicy noodles.
they also do have Mac Donald and their Mac Donald looks like a combination of Mac Donald and Starbucks. why am I saying that you may ask? As I enter when one of the Mac Donald restaurants, there were healthy cookies and coffee in front of the counter before you order what you want. The price wasn’t of any difference but what I thought is despite that they wanted to diversify by having fast food around them, they still connect to healthy eating habits that they have to insert a little bit of culture like rice crips, Roasted chestnuts. It’s definitely different from other Mac Donald restaurants I visited.
Part 2:
Explore the food shops and restaurants.
What kinds of food stores are there? They have regular fast-food restaurants like most places in America, but with a little touch of cultural ideas added. like selling instant coffee in Mac Donald.
What types of foods are sold?
What types of foods are served in restaurants?
What kinds of foods are completely new to you? Nothing was really new to me because I have been to Korean town and china town so the restaurants look a lot similar just as they taste.
Taste something new to you, preferably at each store; describe the appearance, texture, and flavor, etc.
Talk to the merchants and ask them about their traditional stores and foods. So what I did since I am a tea lover, I went to this store which is like a combination of pharmacy and seafood market. I said pharmacy because you can get any medication and I also saw people picking up medication but mostly half the store is full of herbal teas. By the way most of the area right up the exit of 7 trains, one side of the area looks like an herbal village and tea and vegetables.
What are your feelings about foods and about shopping in this environment?
Did you see the foods that were discussed in class?
Are the prices worth the trip? Were they more or less expensive than you thought or compared to other markets?
Part 3:
Now go to a large supermarket in your neighborhood and find examples of foods that parallel the ethnic cuisine that you’ve chosen to investigate. What are the differences in the experience of buying culturally rich foods in a supermarket? What are the price differences in foods purchased at the ethnic stores and the supermarket? Which experience and source do you feel is more valuable and why? Honestly not much difference in buying food from the supermarket in Harlem than Queens because supermarket with the same name in Harlem is different from the one in the Bronx because systematically, food is expensive depending on the areas, not because of their value or how natural they are but when it comes to their cultural food like a specific type of noodles, I didn’t find them in my neighborhood supermarket to even compare.
Part 4:
Get one traditional recipe from this culture and conduct a nutritional analysis on it.
Discuss if it is a healthy choice or not
What could you do to change it?