From The Peopling of New York City
Hong Kong Supermarket
The grocery store is important for specific packaged imports that the Chinese in Brooklyn's Chinatown prefer. At the front of the store is a Chinese pharmacy that uses all natural healing and here they sell many different herbs.
The whole front opening of the store is filled with fresh fruit and vegetables. In the store there are many flies around the produce. This may be a turn off at first, but consider that the American groceries may be sprayed with many more pesticides and that is why they don’t have these insects flying around them. The grocery shoppers here do not seem to mind that their produce is all-natural! Almost all of the items available have been imported from China. Hence, everything is written in Mandarin to cater to the residents here.
The deli, however is a kind of its own that does not seem English or American at all. All the meat is butchered right in the middle of the isle. Literally the whole four-legged pig is on a table being cut up for its meat, which may actually be preferable. In American delis, no one knows where the meat comes from nor what was done to it in the process of packaging. This Chinese process is much fresher and most likely safer because it is not done in secret. At the other end of the deli is seafood. This is also very fresh, and in fact much of it is still alive and ready to order. Buckets of little crabs crawling around, and fresh lobsters swimming in the tanks are available.
Crawling Crabs in the Hong Kong Supermarket