Organization
The Battambang Market
The Battambang Market is a Cambodian-owned grocery store on Eddy Street in the Tenderloin neighborhood of San Francisco.[1][2] It opened to supply refugees and immigrants from Southeast Asia with the foods and flavors they had left behind.[3]
History
The Bold Italic dates the market's opening to the 1970s, and it has served the local Southeast Asian community since that decade.[3][1] The San Francisco Standard dates the opening to 1987, when a wave of Southeast Asian immigrants settled in the Tenderloin.[2][4] The chef Nite Yun counts it among her favorite markets in the city.[4]
The store
The shop is small and crowded, with narrow aisles.[2][4] Its shelves hold ingredients for Thai, Cambodian, Filipino and Vietnamese cooking.[3] Among the Cambodian goods is real prahok, the fermented mudfish paste used in the most traditional Cambodian dishes.[1][2] The market also sells Khmer "dessert tamales," sweet rice with banana or jackfruit wrapped in banana leaves.[1]
Other staples include palm sugar, Golden Mountain seasoning sauce, sardines in tomato sauce, Three Ladies jasmine rice, Honey Bee grass jelly, Wai Wai instant noodles and shrimp chips, along with coconut scrapers.[2] There are soup bases for pho and tom yum, pastes and sauces of vegetables, spices, fish and meat, and canned fruits such as longan, rambutan, lychee, mangosteen and toddy palm. A small produce section and a freezer of krapow, curry, pandan and makrut lime leaves complete the stock.[3]
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Yelp, The Battambang Market
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 San Francisco Standard, The Haul: where chef Nite Yun shops (June 2024)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 The Bold Italic, 10 Bay Area international markets (December 2021)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 San Francisco Standard, Shop like a chef: four restaurant pros on where they grocery shop (July 2025)