Crying in Wing Yip

Writers and cooks share memories of their favourite Asian shops and supermarkets across the UK. Introduction by Angela Hui.

Feb 17, 2026

Welcome back to the Vittles Chinatowns Project! In today’s newsletter, Crying in Wing Yip, we have asked eight of our favourite chefs, restaurateurs and writers to reflect on the significance of Asian supermarkets, and how they allow East and South East Asian people to connect to their heritage.
You can read the rest of the project here:
Who is Chinatown for?, by Xiao Ma
The New Chinatowns, by Barclay Bram
The Vittles Guide to London’s Chinatowns, by various
The Vittles Guide to the UK’s Chinatowns (including individual guides to Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Cambridge and Glasgow), by various

In the ever-evolving landscape of British grocery culture over the last decade, Asian supermarkets have undergone a remarkable transformation. Previously, supermarkets like SeeWoo and Wing Yip were anchored in ethnically diverse suburbs and Chinatowns. Their modest storefronts hid their true importance: in addition to being lifelines for families seeking a taste of home, they also propped up the entire immigrant-owned hospitality trade, providing the essential and hard-to-find ingredients which are needed to cook and survive.

Today, Asian convenience stores and supermarkets have reshaped British eating habits. From family-run mom-and-pop corner shops to sleek chain establishments like H Mart and Oseyo, Asian grocery shops have transcended niche status to become a nationwide cultural phenomenon. Even major UK supermarkets have caught on: their outdated ‘oriental’ aisles, once full of novelty items, now stock products that have infiltrated nearly every kitchen in the country.

The newer Asian supermarkets – the ones with in-store noodle pit stops and friends-only WeChat groups for exclusive deals – are great, but for many people, myself included, stepping into older stores like Wing Yip feels like something more than a shopping trip. You can easily lose hours of your life amid the narrow aisles pulsing with Aaron Kwok’s Cantopop hits, fighting Asian aunties over the freshest bunches of morning glory or marvelling at the live fish tanks as if in an aquarium.

These stores have been there for us when we need them, providing a tangible link to our past as well as an education about new ingredients that can rekindle connections to our cultural roots. They’re sanctuaries for people who don’t quite feel like they belong, or for those who want to top up their Asianness. This compilation celebrates supermarkets and shops around the UK that have fostered the country’s East and South-East Asian communities. Accessible, affordable, warm and welcoming, they also now come with the latest stupid Buldak ramen flavour as seen on TikTok. Angela Hui

Asia Supermarket, Belfast

Katie Goh, writer and author

When I was a kid living on the outskirts of Belfast, our day trips into the city usually ended with a stop on the Ormeau Road, at a warehouse called Asia Supermarket. Asia Supermarket was the only large-scale Asian supermarket in Belfast – and in Northern Ireland – when I was growing up. For three decades, it was the only place Chinese restaurateurs and immigrants went to get ingredients and do their shopping. It was like a portal out of the North, which back then was 99% white. In the warehouse, I was surrounded by Asians. Back outside, it was as if they had disappeared.

Sometimes my brothers and I would stay in the car, shouting ‘Pocky! Pocky!’ at my dad as he went in to pick up our essentials: rice, sauce packets and vegetables that weren’t yet available in Tesco. Other times, we would join him in the dimly lit warehouse to make sure he chose the right flavour of Nissin noodles. One day, as I was helping to carry boxes of food in from the car, I tripped over on our driveway and got a gnarly cut on my left knee. The little gravel stones buried their way under my skin. Two decades on, I still have the scar.

In 2018, Asia Supermarket moved to a shiny, multi-storey building – a relocation that cost millions, according to the Belfast Telegraph. I visited it recently when I was back home. It is a world away from the warehouse of my childhood. The new Asia Supermarket is large, brightly lit and filled with Chinese, Korean, Thai and Malaysian food. At the top of the building is an excellent cafe serving rice and curry as well as salads and sandwiches. The clientele has also changed dramatically: when I was there, I saw as many white people as Asian.

Asia Supermarket’s glow-up has made it more popular with, and perhaps more palatable to, white locals. I like the new building, and good on the owners for their success, but I remain nostalgic for the dimly lit warehouse that inadvertently gave me my scar.

Lo’s Noodle Factory, London

Songsoo Kim, chef, food writer and head of sourcing and development at the Super8 restaurant group

I remember the first time I was taken to Lo’s Noodles. It was with Rita – a boisterous, no-nonsense Taiwanese friend with a sharp eye for good turnip cakes. At Lo’s, I instantly felt whole. I picked up some turnip cakes and some dried-shrimp-and-chive cheung fun, and stocked them in my fridge for a time I needed solace.

That was seven years ago, when a fresh bag of ho fun cost £2. The price has almost doubled since, but it still feels affordable. Even when I don’t buy anything, I walk past Lo’s just to look in, to make sure it’s still going. Rice, water, craft, steam. Each hand reaching for the noodles or cheung fun feels like a small vote for its survival. The more people I see queuing, picking up noodles, the luckier I feel.

Meanwhile, the soft pull of ho fun and the warmth of cheung fun at midnight have become my own quiet grammar of care. Rice, water and steam: these elements probably make up the door to my soul, with cheung fun forming the doorway curtain. For sure, this is the comfort that connects us all.

I did visit Lo’s once to ask if they could make sen yai – Thailand’s counterpart to ho fun, made with a little more tapioca starch – for a dish at Smoking Goat. I was met with a hard pass. The amount I requested was too small to justify changing the recipe or trying something new. How naive of me.

Hang Won Hong, Manchester

Hannah-Natalie Hosanee, co-founder of Little Yellow Rice Co

Dear Hang Won Hong,

Walking your aisles always feels different to my usual weekly shop. Stepping inside your shop feels like visiting a friend’s home, comforting and inviting. It has become a ritual: and never feels like a quick errand. I often come without a shopping list, looking for inspiration. I move slowly through the aisles, fluorescent lights bouncing off shelves packed with jars, sauces, vegetables and noodles. You’re busy and a little chaotic, which takes me straight back to childhood memories in Malaysia.

The way you’re organised by region matters when you cook the way I do. I can walk straight in, head for the Malaysian section and know I’ll find exactly what I need. When a dish depends on a specific paste, sauce and seasoning, that clarity makes all the difference. You easily have the best Malaysian selection in Manchester.

Your instant noodle selection never disappoints, and neither do the drinks, from OldTown white coffee to instant milk teas and make-your-own boba kits. Then there are the snacks: crisps, chocolates and chewy sweets galore, those everyday joys I’d forgotten I missed. Most importantly, thank you for always having the Malaysian Maggi garlic chilli sauce I can’t live without.

You’re more than a supermarket. You reconnect me to my roots and make Manchester feel a little more like home, no matter how far I am from my family.

With love and appreciation,
Hannah-Natalie Hosanee

New Discoveries in London

Ken Hom, CBE, chef and cookbook author

I always love exploring the food shops in London’s Chinatown, especially the larger ones like SeeWoo or Loon Fung. As an old codger who has been cooking for over sixty years, I still discover new things about the richness of Asia’s food culture in these fantastic places. My go-to items are, first, Chinese sausages – sweet and savoury, made with pork meat and pork fat (or duck liver and fat), marinated in spices and hung on strings to dry; steamed with rice, they are irresistible. The Chinese bacon is just as good, and as a chilli lover, I always experiment with new types of chilli sauce. Although I live part of the time in Bangkok and travel often to Tokyo and Hong Kong, I never fail to discover something new in London. Each time I visit the Chinatown shops, I have to drag myself away because I cannot stop buying things!

Anonymously Collated Late-Nineties Memories, London

Will Harris, author and writer

After church – that’s right – I would drive into town – forty minutes or more, depending on the traffic. Dad had char siu crispy noodles; it was his treat. We were looking forward to things! No, I didn’t think the world would end. I used to hate driving, didn’t like it at all. I hated it when you’d roll a cigarette and steer with your elbows. Soup noodles for me. We had a dial-up modem, a big desktop called a Tiny. Why was it called that? What could you do on it? We drank SunnyD for breakfast. You wanted to buy labu. Cut it up into slices and chuck it in the pan, and it turns sweet. I had a pair of paper sunglasses for watching the solar eclipse that came free with a magazine. I listened to ‘Can’t Stop’ by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. There was an eclipse? Yes, I was just saying. I preferred New Loon Moon to Loon Fung; they had better things there. You mean they had more South-East Asian things? But it was cloudy. Waste of time. I waited at the back in the cold section. Ran my hand over the bumpy strips of vacuum-sealed tempeh and pretended it was my brain. Oh, and I’d get a coconut bun for tea. You remember that? They dropped the coins down a wooden slit, or was that at Kowloon Bakery? The light went out and the temperature fell. You were plugged into the whole world. I was asleep.

Labu doesn’t look like how it tastes. You think it’ll taste like bitter melon. Everyone had MSN Messenger then. I was in the car and suddenly it was night. I can’t picture it; I must have been asleep. We had labu and eggs for dinner.

Day In, Birmingham

Sabrina Fung, owner of Blow Water Cafe in Birmingham

When it comes to buying ingredients, I always head to Day In Supermarket. It’s been a fixture in Birmingham’s Chinatown for me ever since I arrived as a student. Now I run a restaurant here, my weekly shop still happens at Day In; in terms of style, layout and what’s on the shelves, it’s the closest shop in the city to the shops back home in Hong Kong. The staff know me so well that when they pick up the phone they greet me in Cantonese: ‘Good morning, Sabrina, how can I help?’ They must have my number saved. Kate, who often answers, sometimes glances at what I’m buying, and we end up chatting about recipes. It’s like filling a little hole of homesickness every time.

The Basement in SeeWoo, London

Erchen Chang, co-founder and creative director of BAO

I’ve always been obsessed with hidden undergrounds, the thrill of discovering a tucked-away world. When I was at the Slade, Hanna Supermarket on Store Street in Bloomsbury had a restaurant in its basement, in which I found shelves of old VHS tapes with handwritten Korean labels. My friends and I guessed that it was some kind of kinky, obscure Korean porn, and we’d sit there eating our bibimbaps and laughing at the idea of being surrounded by illicit materials. One day, the restaurant’s windows were smashed in. We heard a rumour that some gangsters had discovered the tapes and the owners had to flee.

This was also around the time that Shing and I had started dating. He seduced me with his cooking and his knowledge of Chinatown’s hidden corners. He came up with the idea of a dumpling crawl – a pub crawl, but for dumplings. We went from shop to shop, ordering too much because each place had a minimum order (as they should). But the thing that impressed me most that day was the basement at SeeWoo.

The entrance back then was more hidden than it is now. We’d slip downstairs, admiring the Leung Tim cleavers together, how beautifully wrapped they were, in that old-school glossy kraft crisp paper packaging. We’d imagine whose bones we’d be chopping with those cast-iron blades. There were other treasures too: giant ladles, cast-iron sizzlers and massive wok colanders, tools built for kitchens way bigger than our own.

Years passed, and we opened three restaurants near Chinatown. SeeWoo became our emergency pantry; whenever we ran out of something, that’s where we’d go, scrambling for supplies at the last minute. They’d hand-write their invoices in Chinese, which meant most of my chefs couldn’t even tell if they’d been charged correctly. But they still have the best-sized kai lan and mustard greens. They stock doubanjiang from Sichuan – the only one we’ll use – and the Pearl River Bridge ‘Premium Soy’, a flavour we can’t live without.

The shelves at the entrance shift with the seasons: dou miao only appears in the winter, and yellow chives emerge with the first spring sun. In the peak of the summer, I can never resist a box of £15 longan fruit. Sometimes I still sneak downstairs just to reacquaint myself with the crockery, in case of emergencies. The basement air is still. I can take a breath – perhaps admire a Leung Tim cleaver, romanticise, remember how I fell in love with SeeWoo in the first place – before heading back to the never-ending chaotic kitchen.

SeeWoo from Three Feet off the Ground, London

Huong Black, chef

As an eighties- and Scottish-born, Croydon-raised, Viet Hoa daughter of North Vietnamese refugees, I have had my fair share of ‘crying in SeeWoo’ moments. I have only been to Vietnam twice: for six weeks when I was fourteen, then nearly thirty years later with my children. Between these two visits, my mum died aged forty-five, and I committed the crime of becoming a chef despite my ostensible academic success.

This career change came after a major depressive episode in my late twenties. I now cook what I call ‘white people food’ – modern British cooking that, at its best, incorporates world pantry ingredients, but at its worst is a kind of semi-edible cosplay you’d never serve your own people.

Losing my mum cut me off from my wider Viet Canto (and American) family, leaving me to navigate motherhood on my own in a biracial household. I sometimes feel like an imposter carrying an empty shopping basket around Asian supermarkets, staring at shelves stacked with things I half recognise, ingredients I might have eaten once or watched my parents cook with. Eating bowl after bowl of bún riêu in Hà Nội recently made me realise I’d been overdoing mine for years: too tomatoey, too porky, or, as my husband puts it, ‘cooking with crayons’.

Although I grew up eating plenty of Viet Chinese food, not speaking or reading Chinese means I never quite know how to ask for help in Chinese shops. Still, I’m drawn to the packaging of brands that seem trapped in time: it’s why I always buy Evergreen Pickled Leeks, Foo Lung Ching Kee, Rose Brand products or Chin Chin Grass Jelly. Newer Vietnamese mixes and flours now line the shelves, but I tend to make mine from scratch because I’m old-school and we all have our crosses to bear. I was surprised, when retraining as a chef, to learn that potato starch – what culinary school calls ‘fécule’ – was used in western kitchens as a thickening agent: I only ever saw cornflour being sold in Sainsbury’s. I honestly thought potato starch was our culinary secret, one that came in white packaging with pink lettering.

Living in Zone 4, I usually drive to Wing Yip in Croydon or Duc Tien in Charlton, load up 10kg sacks of rice and wander wide aisles. I also love small Vietnamese shops, like Lai Loi on Deptford High Street, for their specificity – I’m more comfortable in my Vietnameseness there. And yet, SeeWoo still gets me. I remember it from when I was three feet off the ground, being called ‘leng mui’ (pretty girl) as my cheeks were pinched by marigold-gloved hands, my parents chatting away in Cantonese, safe to present one version of themselves. No shame. I’m trying to let go of that shame, as well. The other day, I bought Ching Po Leng herbal soup mix there, paid in English, and nothing terrible happened. I hope my kids feel that Asian supermarkets are safe spaces for them, too.

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