Month: August 2007

Yesterday, JY and I decided to go to Le Asia to check out their product offerings.

We got there at around 11:45am. The first problem we encountered, there was no parking spots. We had to park in an adjacent Long’s Drugs lot, and walk a bit to get to Le Asia.

The store was even more crowded, there were people all over, checking out the merchandise, having cocktails, and doing various things. I think there were some San Ramon officials there for the grand-opening, I was just surprised that they haven’t left by then.

I also noticed a lot of people with no shopping basket or merchandise in hands. I thought a supermarket is an odd place for window-shopping, but I soon found out why. The check-out lines were 10+ people long. They only have about 8 lanes, and each one was running, but there was just so many people behind each line. I suspect it’s their Point-Of-Sale system that may not be capturing all the pricing information correctly that’s causing the delay, but I don’t want to wait in line to find out. It would taken me more than 30 minutes to check out, so I dropped my shopping basket as well.

Now on to the stores.

Le Asia is one of the largest Chinese grocery stores I’ve been to. The reason is that they replaced an old Ralph’s, and it was quite large to begin with. The store is divided into sections such as Bakery, Deli, Meat and Seafood, and in-store vendors. The layout is very similar to an American supermarket, with fresh produce and to the right of the entrance, dairy, meat and seafood to the back.

They had a very extensive fruit and vegetable section, even larger than the Safeway that I usually shop at. The fruit and produce were of quite good quality, and were priced well. Looking at this part of the store, it’s very difficult to distinguish it from your neighborhood grocery stores. The thing that gave it away though, was a whole aisle of instant noodles to the left of the fruit stands. You only see that in an Asian supermarket.

There was some freshly-baked breads. The bakery was not fully functional, I didn’t see any cakes or other pastries. The meat section has the layout of a typical Chinese market, with meat in bulk to be cut to order. The seafood section offers live (love those) and frozen fishes, crabs amongst other things.

The store has a whole section devoted to in-store vendors. These range from a gift-shop, a video store, a kitchen remodeling store, a cosmetics shop, a Filipino fast food stall (yet to open), bubble tea shop (yet to open), and of a counter for Chinese medicine. It’s very interesting that they are renting these spaces out, maybe they don’t have enough merchandise to fill the whole store with?

JY and I looked through most of the aisles, and were able to find most of the grocery items we normally buy from a Chinese grocery store.

Overall, I’m impressed by the size of the store, the cleanliness, the wide aisles, and extensive product offering. I’ll definitely be shopping here for the foreseeable future.

I also heard from a friend that the long-awaited Ranch 99 store in Dublin is also scheduled to open in 3 weeks, and competition can only be good for us consumers.

Happy grocery shopping for those of you in the tri-valley area.

The Le Asia supermarket in San Ramon is open yet, contrary to what the store person told me on Wednesday.

I went over to Le Asia fairly certain that it will be open because the store person I spoke to over the phone told me so. However, when was there at around 11am, there are a lot of activities, and quite a few families were trying to get in the store, but turned back. We were told to wait for the grand-opening tomorrow.

BTW, I took a peek inside, and it looks huge. There are many isles, and it looks like they carry a good assortment of asian food.

Let’s just wait and see what happens tomorrow.

I’ll let you know how the grand-opening goes.

Hello all.

It’s been awhile since I made any postings. I’ve been busy after I moved to San Ramon. I really enjoy it here, much nicer environment, friendlier people and better facilities.

However, one thing I miss when I lived in San Leandro was easy access to Chinese groceries.

There is a good fresh-produce market here in San Ramon called Windmill Farms at 2255 San Ramon Valley Blvd, which carries tons of fresh fruits and vegetables.

However, there is really no place to find Chinese groceries in San Ramon or the Tri-valley area.

The good news is, a new Asian market will open in south San Ramon, called Le Asia. It’s at the old Ralph’s location, at the intersection of Alcosta Blvd and Village Parkway. I’ve been to the site a few times, and it’s in a good-size lot.

I also learned that they are opening on August 15th, with grand-opening on August 18th.

I plan to go and check it out with JY tonight, and see if it will meet our needs in the future. We’ll report back in couple of days to give our impression.