San Francisco sorely needs something akin to a 99 Ranch Market... a place where everyone can reasonably expect to find their flavor of Asian food, which supports a diverse community with good prices and accessability for CalFresh / EBT -- which is frankly a matter of basic food equity for many, many people, especially in a city with *lots* of elderly poor.
Instead, it's significantly reliant on tiny, crowded neighborhood markets, especially in neighborhoods like Chinatown... home to a LOT of those elderly poor. And yet, those old women -- and many old men -- persevere. They do this thanks to stores like this one, and all the fresh produce markets on nearby Stockton Street.
Dai Lee is a tardis of a market... bigger on the inside than on the outside. It has several aisles that offer a *real* fix for just about every variety of sweet tooth you might have... but if you get past the voluminous assortment of snacks, you will actually find the basis of a lot of very practical, affordable, surprisingly healthy meals, with some real treats for vegans / vegetarians, including my favorite vegetarian bouillon mix... Harvest Chicken Flavor, which is gluten free and made from yeast extract.
They also stocked a diverse mix of dried noodles, from rice to wheat to Korean yam noodles, dried tofu skin "knots" for soups, dried fried tofu for a different textured snack, dried shitake and black fungus mushrooms, etc. A variety of flours, such as rice, tapioca, etc. Lots of ways to avoid wheat. Also, a wide variety of affordable rices, grains and beans... quinoa at non-yuppie prices. (I can't tell you how important this is... San Franciscans who pay obscene yuppie prices for basic foods actively help PRICE PEOPLE OUT OF THEIR NEIGHBORHOODS.)
Like many of the nearby markets who presumably don't want to lose a huge chunk of their profit margin to credit card agencies, they are "cash only"... unless you give them a CalFresh / EBT card, in which case, they happily take your card.
Bringing cash is advised basically everywhere when it comes to getting groceries in Chinatown... which is just as well, as the banks and ATM service in the area sucks. Cash -- and not draining an already endangered healthy neighborhood food culture with credit card transaction fees -- helps keep all those little, crowded, diverse markets alive, even in a very expensive city... and those markets full of disproportionately fresh, healthy, diverse foods help keep the communities they serve alive, with real foods... living longer, healthier, better-quality lives, well into old age. read more