Asheville’s oldest Asian market, open since 1999, is Foreign Affairs on Tunnel Road. This cozy spot offers up kitchen essentials like rice and dumpling wrappers, plus fresh produce, sundries, snacks and a veritable universe of ramen.

Asheville’s newest and biggest Asian grocery store is Asiana Market, the expansion of beloved local grocery Lee’s Asian Market. Until 2023, Lee’s operated as a smaller Asian market in the Skyland Plaza shopping center within a strip of grocery stores on Hendersonville Road. Asiana Market is an awesome testament to increasing demand for more diverse cuisine.

Business was always steady, says co-owner Steven Ar, but the last few years’ demand made Lee’s smaller space unable to accommodate an ever-increasing workload. “So many people are moving here from much larger cities,” says Ar. “We have seen that with this increased population comes an increased demand for larger and more diverse local grocery stores.”

Amongst Asheville’s grocery stores, you can find foods from nearly every Asian country, including Thailand, Vietnam, India, China, Japan, Korea and Indonesia. Each offers its own special twist.

Located in a strip mall off Patton Avenue, Kim’s Oriental Food & Gifts is small but mighty. Inside 1,000 square feet of storefront is an impressive array of predominantly Korean foods (including their local- ly beloved kimchi), plus sushi rolls, Asian cookware, spices, teas and other pantry items.

A labyrinth on Leicester Highway, YZ Asian Market carries mostly East Asian and Southeast Asian groceries, including walls of pantry spices and goods. And with fresh fish on ice and live tanks of crab and lobster, its seafood offerings are superb.

A common theme for Asian markets is that the shelves are typically stocked with inventory not to be found in a traditional grocery store.

Our advice? Take your time strolling the aisles and you’re likely to discover all kinds of delightful sweet and savory snacks, rice, noodles, ramen and seaweed. Stock your freezer with steam buns, egg rolls and dumplings so you’ll always have something filling and convenient on hand to eat.

Be sure to check out the beverage section at area Asian markets. You’ll find a wide selection of teas, imported beers, plum wine, sake and soju to complete your grocery haul. Fun fact: Many local Asian markets, including Kim’s Oriental Food & Gifts, import the bulk of their products through companies in Atlanta, New Jersey or California, which helps enable markets to offer a wider variety of products to consumers.

When searching for your next dinner recipe, look no further than local Asian markets to gather ingredients that you can’t find anywhere else in town. With so many local options, it has never been easier to get a taste of Asian cuisine in the Blue Ridge Mountains.