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Chinatown North emerges at the end of the Orange Line
By adamg on Mon, 09/19/2016 - 9:08am
Adriana Li notes the profusion of Chinese restaurants in Malden.
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Comments
Malden
That street that runs perpendicular to city hall is like a movie set. Malden would be a great location to film a zombie apocalypse video.
Malden Zombies
Better film it quick. That ugly City Hall is finally slated for demolition, and the street will be opened up to the outside world again.
Restaurants are following the trend
That whole area appears to have seen a huge influx of Asian Americans. In 2000, they accounted for 14% of the Malden population and in 2010, they account for 21%. This is congruent with my own observations of the demographic changes at the Everett Costco over the years. So, it makes sense that more restaurants would open catering to the influx of clientele looking for their favorites.
Not just Chinese
A lot of Southeast Asians, too - Cambodians and Vietnamese.
The downtown is really picking up. It has become a solid destination for New American/Pub cuisine. Got to love a restaurant like Mystic Station where the wait staff wears shirts that say "No We Do NOT Have Bud Light on Draught".
do you keep a notebook
that tracks how many minorities you see while shopping?
you should consider switching to excel, costco offers affordable computing options that will assist you in this endeavor
Nope
No notebook. And I only need the power of excel for calculating the percentage chance that you'll post something that's off-topic, insultory, and/or offensive. I should have bet on the over.
sorry
that you got buttmad that i made fun of your anecdotal observations regarding the percentage of asian costco shoppers
ps
not sorry
Kaz is Right
Everett is my usual Costco.
When I go to Waltham or Danvers or Stoughton? OMG so WHITE and you can't even find giant bags of rice or lactose free milk or other things that aren't staples in the Real America(tm)
Kind of like the difference between shopping at the
WhitopiaWilmington Market Basket and the Chelsea Market Basket - the place could be empty, but you will have some idea of what ethnic mix shops there!Here's another way to look at it
Go to the Everett Costco. What items do you find there?
Then go to one of the more suburban ones - Waltham, Danvers, etc. See what you find there that you don't in Everett, and what sort of things that you find in Everett that you don't elsewhere (other than Costco booze).
That will give you an idea of who is shopping where - especially given the shopping done by small restaurants at any given Costco.
That's the rub
I routinely go back and forth between the Waltham Costco and the Everett Costco as I live pretty close to the middle of both in Brighton. Which one I go to often has more to do with what else I'm doing that day or where traffic is best. I don't notice any difference in the content of either store, but I definitely see more Asian Americans at the Everett one than the Waltham one in recent years. I assumed there was a greater population difference between the Waltham area and the Everett area, but I never cared or went out looking up census numbers to confirm it until this post also mentioned that Malden is a hot-bed of new Chinese restaurants.
Maybe it depends on what you buy
We tend to buy 25lb/10 kilo bags of rice, lactose free milk (echoing anon above). Waltham and Danvers don't tend to have those items, surprisingly, but Everett has a good selection of each - particularly different kinds of rices in large bags. Also seen in Everett are curry bases, chinese sausage, and some of the basic staples of Mexican cooking. There are probably other differences, but I wouldn't notice because they are not things that I buy. Stoughton and Waltham have a lot more clothing items.
We fairly regularly go to the Hong Kong Market in Malden to get Asian cooking supplies at a much lower cost than a grocery store (if a grocery store even has them). My son cooks a lot of his own meals and favors certain sauces and noodles. That same market also has a great selection of produce and packaged items sought after by the local African-American and Caribbean populations.
Asian Maldonian Here
As a person who grew up in Malden. We long been living here for quite a while. When I was still a high schooler, we wondered why when there's so many of us (we made up roughly a quarter of the school's population back then) yet there was so few restaurants and stuff like that that. Now it seems something finally change in the last 2-3 years that we finally began to open large number of restaurants and shops. Maybe it's just momentum or maybe a critical mass of capital (and if it was capital, then it really took a while as we had empty storefronts like where Ming's is now, it was a closed Brook's Pharmacy for years), but it seems we are now taking those storefronts and actually opening them.
Chinatown South
From North Quincy to Quincy Center there are a number of excellent Asian restaurants. The Vietnamese community in the area of Fields Corner have transformed the neighborhood into a culinary delight.
Fuloon
It gets varying reviews on Yelp, but we have gone there regularly for years and love it. All Seasons Table is excellent, too.
Full Moon
We liked it when we went there. Also two Ethiopian restaurants in Malden, I believe.
Habesha
One of the Ethiopian restaurants we've eaten at. The storefronts on that block do not look inviting, but inside it is a warm atmosphere and the food is great.
We have gone there several times...
... over the years. Always wonderful.
There's also a small sit-down
There's also a small sit-down restaurant between Yong Yong and Ferry Street Food And Drink called The Great Chow. Haven't tried it yet.