WELCOME Fresh Food Having been brought up on a Chinese diet,…read moremost forms of Asian cooking is second nature to me now. I can't count the number of times I've scoured Brisbane looking for a specific ingredient without which my authentic Thai or Malaysian or Chinese dish would fail. WELCOME Fresh Food is one of my regular suppliers for Asian groceries. For those who are use to shopping at Woolworths or Coles, there are two things you'll notice about Asian grocery stores in general. Firstly, the aisles are not very wide. It wouldn't be unusual for two women with normal sized child-bearing hips to get wedged in an aisle. WELCOME Fresh Food is no exception. There is nothing you can about this. I repeat, there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about this. The only way to deal with it is to learn how to sidle, slip and slide through temporary cracks in the crowd. If you do tend to get claustrophobic, fortunately there are quiet periods - go first thing in the morning or half an hour before shutting. Do not go around midday on a weekend! Secondly, you may notice that the level of cleanliness is not like Woollies or Coles. I'm not saying there are bugs crawling around but sometimes floors are streaked with mud or grocery juices. Things can get slippery so be careful! Also, unturned stock tends to sit on shelves gathering dust. Fortunately, WELCOME Fresh Food is one of the cleanest Asian grocery shops I've been to so hopefully you won't encounter any problems. Finally the range of products at WELCOME Fresh Food is excellent. It's difficult for a general Asian grocery shop to stock everything - that's why there are specialty Asian grocery shops which will focus on Korean or Indian. WELCOME Fresh Food does a decent range of most South East Asian cooking products. I'm singing their praise higher than usual because they helped me out the other week with a purchase of Kombu (seaweed) which I was unable to find at four other Asian grocery stores in Sunnybank. Trading Hours (Open 7 Days) Monday-Saturday 8.30am-7pm Sunday 9am-6pm Public holiday 9am-6pm Closed on Christmas Day & Boxing Day

This has to be the biggest, busiest Asian supermarket in Sunnybank. Given its size you would expect…read moreit to have the biggest range of produce and as far as I can see, it does. Along with all the usual longer life stuff there's a good sized fresh produce section with vegetables that actually look good, unlike some of the other places where the bok choy falls to one side in protest as soon as you pick it up. One thing I like about this place is that they have more than one check out - I've been in one too many Asian supermarket where I've had to wait for much longer than should be necessary just to buy one item, while I've been stuck behind people buying a week's worth of groceries because there's one measly cash register in the entire place.

I'm writing this with trepidation because the last thing I want is for people to start shopping at…read morethe Eight Mile Plains Woolworths, emptying the shelves faster than they can be re-stocked, overcrowding it until it becomes just like all other Woolworths. So this isn't a check-this-out-its-awesome review, it's more of a gloat about finding a peaceful, fully stocked Woolworths with check-out chicks at the cash registers. Before I found this Woolworths in Warrigal Square, I was resigned to grocery shopping at 8:30 on a Tuesday or Wednesday night at Woolworths Garden City. This was the only time the aisles were relatively empty - no screaming children, no unusually wide people that took up the whole aisle, no twenty minutes wait at the check outs. Unfortunately, at this time a lot of the shelves were empty. Also management caught on to the fact that shoppers were waiting only five minutes at the check outs instead of the customary twenty and removed all check-out assistants around this time forcing people to use self check out. Shopping at the Warrigal Square Woolworths is like getting into a really exclusive night club. The facilities are new and clean, they never run out of food and best of all, there must be a limit on numbers. Even if I shop on a Saturday afternoon, there's hardly any queuing at the checkouts and I've never been rammed in the back by a trolley-rage mum trying to bust through. This Woolworths is about two degrees colder than any other Woolworths though so if you're going to shop here, bring a cardie.

The level of telephone service at this store is below pathetic. Phones are never answered. There IS…read moreNO customer support.

Fresh, Convenient, Cheap When it comes to grocery shopping,…read morethose are the catchcries of our time. Bellas Fruit shop fulfils all three categories. Fresh - The vine ripened tomatoes here make me crave bruschetta with their sweet smell and the bright red blush of their skins. Convenient - there's always parking here. It's next door to a bakery, deli and butchers so you can do half your weekly shop in this complex alone. Cheap - like all fruitgrocers, prices are a little cheaper here than at Woolworths or Coles. This is especially obvious during the summer months when you can buy cheap trays of mangoes and also year round with their avocadoes. While I wouldn't recommend driving across town purely for this greengrocer, residents of Eight Mile Plains, Sunnybank, Macgregor, Wishart and even Mount Gravatt should give this place a yelp.

This big Asian grocery store stocks all the pantry staples plus a whole lot more. There is fresh…read moreproduce, which stocks hard to find vegetables like bitter melon, okra and long melon. There is also the Fish Shop (the trading hours for this are a little different to the main supermarket), frozen produce, sauces and pastes, crockery and cooking utensils, confectionery and more varieties of drinks than you can imagine. They conveniently split the isles into the different countries and styles of food too- Japanese, Korean, Philippines. However you will still get lost in this place and will spend all afternoon walking up and down the isles. Head up the back for a huge range of teas - both teabags and loose-leaf tea. You can find so many varieties of Chinese green teas and Oolong teas, plus more varieties of tea I don't even know, at half the price of fancy tea shops like Tea2 and The Tea Centre. I got a 227g tin of Oolong tea for $10, which is more than half the price of 250g of Oolong tea from Tea2.

So you already know that out of all the amazing Asian grocery stores in Sunnybank, this one is the…read morebest, but I feel compelled to tell you about the recent discoveries I made here. First, they have the cheapest green tea around, plus a lot of other herbal tea flavours you can't find anywhere else. This earns a big, fat stamp of approval from me. In my opinion the range of tea available in most supermarkets is incredibly boring and unadventurous, so I was very excited to come across their wall of tea at the back of the store. Second, a friend and I were wandering through the store, searching for something exciting for dinner when we saw dumplings (many, many, many types and flavours). There were many brands and numerous fridges full of them. We eventually decided to try some prawn ones, but we didn't expect too much since they came frozen in a packet. They were absolutely delicious, just as good as the ones I've had in restaurants, and they were amazingly cheap. A packet of twelve was something like four dollars. I plan to return once everything that's currently occupying the space in my freezer has been eaten, and buy a year's supply of these delicious dumplings, which will probably last me about a week.

This place has pretty much everything you need for your grocery essentials…read more Clean and lots of selections of local produce and meats. They have a sushi stand inside where they make rolls daily. The place has a butcher shop, Deli, Bakery and a small pizza shop inside.

It's not often that such great fruit shops are located in a busy shopping centre packed with…read morechains, but this independent store is one of the best around. It's always full of customers even though it stands directly opposite Woolworths, and has plenty of produce on offer at great prices. My only complaint is that, due to its popularity, it's sometimes difficult to make your way through the busy aisles to whatever item it is you desire.

As far as grocery shopping at Sunnybank, Formosa Asian Market is usually my last resort. Although…read morethis Taiwanese-owned chain has been a regular institution of Brisbane for the past twenty years, I find their range a little limiting for the advance Asian cook. Sure they'll have your range of dashi for Japanese cooking or bean vermicelli for Chinese cooking, but I've had difficulties sourcing unusual products. However, they do have a nice range of steamboat ingredients and decent fresh Asian vegetables so probably worth a try if you're after basic Asian staples.

I love Sunnybank, it's one of the few places in Brisbane besides the valley and Darra I can get my…read moreasian groceries. If you're like me, and like your Miso Paste, Chu Ching Yi Ding instant noodies, your pork and beef balls and your vietnamese pork rolls, this is one of the places to get them. Whilst a little cramped inside, don't bring your babies by the way, they manage to stock a lot of stuff in the lots of shelves they have put in this space. There isn't much space to move on a busy weekend day, but it's fun I've got to admit. Navigating my way around the fully packed aisles looking for that special ingredient for my pho noodle soup or my pork adobo... I can usually find it. They also have cheap fruit and chinese vegies in the front by the cashier counters as well. The staff are always very friendly and although you can't get everything here, it's a great place to start your asian culinary adventure.