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.

All Asian grocery shops are NOT created equal. Some have wider aisles, some are cleaner, some focus…read moreon specific regions in Asian and most do not have good service. Lucky Market Asian Grocery focuses on Korean products. When I'm feeling adventurous, I come here to buy two-minute noodles in exotic brands and flavours that you don't usually see in Chinese grocery shops. Plus it's always a lucky dip to try their myriad of Korean sauces and pastes. This place also has a good range of kimchi and I've never come across a larger variety of seaweed. There's wakame, kelp, marinated products, nori and Kombu plus at least a dozen other seaweed product I can't identify. For all your Korean grocery shopping needs, try Lucky market Asian Grocery.

I have yet to find an Asian supermarket to disappoint me. It's possible that I'm a poor judge and…read moream always so possessed by my wonder of all these delicious items in one place that I'm too blind to see what they're missing, but in my mind this is yet another fantastic place to shop for any Asian food produce you might need. Rows of noodles in every width and length you can imagine, dumplings and won tons, numerous different sauces and abnormally enormous jars of crushed garlic occupy their shelves. I don't recall seeing a fresh produce section which is a bit unusual in such a supermarket, but there's a chance I somehow missed it while my eyes and mouth were busy watering. One noticeable omission, even in my stupor, was Hai Chu. Hai Chu is my favourite Japanese candy; chewy little flavourful rectangular prisms of whatever artificial ingredients it's made from wrapped up and presented in a tube like format - delicious. I will forgive them this horrendous faux pas and say that it's still a great supermarket.

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.