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Padma Jambulapati checks out customers (left) at her Southern Grower’s Market. The grocery specializes in fresh vegetables, many grown on the family farm and delivered fresh daily by her husband.
Padma Jambulapati sees her 3-year-old Southern Growers market as more than an Indian market. “We have Indian groceries, yes, but we serve Americans and Chinese, too. Our focus is on vegetables.” Padma’s husband, Ravi, drives her to the store, just a few doors down from Lynn’s Oriental Market and Capital Seafood Market in Cross Creek Square, six days a week from their farm in Whigham, Georgia, and returns for her in the evening. He farms between 200 and 300 acres of peanuts and 150 acres of cotton, she said, but the 10 acres of vegetables he tends keep the Southern Growers produce bins stocked year-round. “We are closed on Wednesdays,” she said. “That’s when we take produce to Atlanta. Then on Thursday, he delivers it to this store about 11 o’clock in the morning.” International students at FAMU and FSU learn quickly upon arrival in Tallahassee where to shop for the ingredients for their native dishes. For Korean students, New Seoul Oriental Market is one of the first stops. With Korean Bar-B-Q next door, the shopping center at 2624 W. Tennessee St. offers both groceries and prepared food. While smaller than some Asian markets, it offers all the basics, and for years it was the only place to buy Korean specialties, students say. Plus, it’s the only Asian market
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on the west side of town, easily accessible to students by Star Metro buses. Young Sun Lee, a doctoral candidate at Florida State, moved to Tallahassee with her husband in fall 2011. She said she can find the basic ingredients for Korean cooking at New Seoul or Lynn’s Oriental Market, and she and her husband drive to Atlanta once or twice a year to buy specialty items. “Living in Tallahassee, it is somewhat difficult to enjoy Korean food to the fullest,” she said.
The number of Latin groceries in Tallahassee appears to have dropped over the past few years. Part of the decline can be attributed to the recession, which forced a number of small businesses to shut down, and part to the increasing availability of Latin specialty foods in mainstream supermarkets. “I can go to Publix and get everything I need,” said Jose de Jesus Fernandez, a native of the Dominican Republic who grew up in the Northeast, lived in South Florida for many years and moved to Tallahassee several years ago. “Dry beans. Canned beans. Cilantro. Frozen yucca. Chorizo. Anything.” His girlfriend, Christine Willingham, added that local shoppers sometimes don’t realize how good they have it. She moved to western Maryland last summer and found availability to be limited and prices to be higher, with Haas avocados $2 apiece and saffron available only by the ounce — for $18.99. “Living here,” she said, “you take it for granted.” n