Saigon Market #'s 1-3

At the Findlay Market, there is a small store called Saigon Market.  

I know it doesn't look  like much, but its fabulous!  So far, from one recent visit to check out apartments, it contains three reasons i'm excited to move to cincinnati.  

1) Mock Duck

and other types of vegetarian fake meat i had never even dreamed of, like fake oysters! (as shown in pic).  I know it looks gross, but it tastes pretty good, and they have soooo many types.  One of the things that sometimes sucks about being vegetarian is the dearth of options at a commercial level.

2) Russian pickled tomatoes

my favorite russian food.  They do not taste anything like you're imagining.  There are not russian stores in cincinnati the way there are in columbus, so this is a really good find.

3) Stuff Aleks gets excited about.  

It takes kind of a lot for her to get excited about anything.  We wandered around in there for an hour, and she insisted on looking at every single item in the entire store, cuz where she's from they get a lot of asian products, a cultural vestige from communist times, when they had access to everything from georgia and armenia to near mongolia, china, india, and korea.   The thing she was most excited about was their dried squid snacks, a particular favorite of hers, especially as a beer snack.  They are the type the guy ate in the Host, if you remember.  If you haven't seen it, its a Korean creature feature, and very good!