FEATURE
Without access to an Asian market, Bend’s AAPI communities left out of the picture By Nick Rosenberger
WWW.BENDSOURCE.COM / MAY 12, 2022 / BEND’S INDEPENDENT VOICE
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Bend’s Missing Link
Courtesy Unsplash
Multicolored packages plastered with dozens of languages from Indonesian to Korean to Arabic burst from the shelves of the Sunrise Asian Food Market in Eugene, Oregon, as shoppers squeeze by, arms full of vegetables and groceries. This is just another day for a cultural epicenter supplying ingredients and foods that can’t be found anywhere else. For many who identify as Asian, Sunrise is a refuge from chain grocers that often stuff an entire continent’s worth of ethnicities into a single “Asian” aisle. It offers an opportunity to find ingredients like coconut milk, shrimp paste, palm sugar and fish sauce—essential to food from a continent that stretches from the Mediterranean Sea to the outstretched fingers of Indonesia. But in Bend, a city of roughly 100,000, this opportunity does not exist. Within the city, and even across Central Oregon, there are zero Asian markets or international grocers. Without access to these cultural hubs, a vast number of cultures and diverse heritages are left in the dark and forced to find difficult or burdensome workarounds. “It’s a culture shock,” said Sophin Zoé Pruong-McCreery, a Khmer-American who formerly worked for a grocer and moved to Bend from Southern California. As Khmer, Pruong-McCreery traces her ancestry to the Angkorian Empire and indigenous Cambodia. Access to culturally-specific foods and ingredients is the baseline that ties many communities together — flavors that lace together the foundation of cultural or ethnic identities. Yet, despite the importance of culturally appropriate food and ingredients, Asian and Pacific Islander communities in Bend are forced to live without access to some of the most basic ingredients. Vietnamese community members will struggle to find Trung Nguyên coffee, with its strong and ambitious flavors, while Korean kimbap or jajangmyeon is missing from the aisles of chain grocers like Safeway, Albertsons and WinCo. Chinese Gai Lan or Gai Choy?
Forget about it. “Food is such a big part of culture,” Pruong-McCreery said. In Cambodian culture you don’t greet people by saying hello but instead ask if they’ve eaten, she said. “That’s like the first thing you ask a person when they walk in the door.” Courtesy Unsplash
Maloley said as an independent grocery store, they can source directly from various retailers and have things shipped directly to them, which puts them at an advantage over other grocery retailers in the area. She said they also try to empower employees to find things customers are looking for and work to bring them to the market. “My employees can jump on the internet and reach out to our wholesalers and see if they can bring it in,” she said. “We have that flexibility.”
Workarounds
Yet, when looking at culturally specific food, this question can be difficult. In Bend, often the only place to find some ingredients is through the US Foods Chefs Store on NE Third Street, a wholesale food service warehouse, or Newport Market. “We try our best to fill the gap,” said Erika Maloley, Newport’s store manager. However, Newport can only pack so many Asian products on its already full shelves and narrow aisles, with dozens of other cuisines vying for attention. In areas like Portland, multiple Asian markets compete for customers and help keep groceries at an affordable level. In Bend, the lack of access and competition lets grocers set prices however they see fit. “The high prices of foods causes some folks to have to go without and may contribute to a kind of food insecurity,” Pruong-McCreery said.
To cope with the lack of access and high cost, many have depended upon a word-of-mouth system where those who happen to be traveling to Portland or Eugene can stop at various Asian markets to bring ingredients and food back to Bend. Much of this occurs through two Facebook groups: Asian and Pacific Islanders of Central Oregon and the Japanese-American Society of Central Oregon. Pruong-McCreery, a member of APICO, said that after driving the two and a half hours across the Cascade Mountains to Eugene, or the roughly three hours to Portland, “Literally, we will load up the whole car with six months’ worth of Asian products because it’s so much more inexpensive.” This tactic is common, with many spending an entire day, or multiple days, traveling to larger urban centers such as Portland or Eugene to fill up on supplies. Jason Barber, whose wife Christy is Burmese, does the six-hour round-trip drive to Beaverton and Tigard three times a year to fill up on Asian groceries. Barber said they visit H-Mart in Tigard and Fubonn in Portland, along with 99 Ranch, Manila Market or Uwajimaya in Beaverton. When asked what kinds of ingredients the family bought, he said it would be a very long list but included ube jam, rice cakes, Chinese
