As I have previously mentioned, I’ve been frustrated trying to find Chinese noodles that match descriptions in J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook, Serious Eats, and The Woks of Life. I’ve searched four Asian/international groceries. This is what I’ve found.

Your DeKalb Farmers Market

Your DeKalb Farmers Market (YDFM) is an international farmers market specializing in produce and specialty packaged goods. I shop here weekly for fresh produce, and as great as YDFM is for fresh Asian produce, it’s noodle selection is limited. I haven’t found any fresh Asian noodles here. They do have fresh Italian pasta, though. They have a small selection of dried Asian noodles (including dangmyeon!).

First Oriental Market

First Oriental Market is my closest Asian grocery and is my first stop if I need anything not available at YDFM. Most of their products are shelf-stable imports. They’ve pointed me in the right direction for many an ingredient, and I usually don’t have an issue finding things here for Thai recipes. Noodles-wise, they mostly have dried noodles. They have half an aisle of various Japanese and Chinese dried noodles, as well as rice noodles of varying thicknesses. Their fresh noodles are rare and hit-or-miss. I’ve asked them about fresh Chinese noodles and at that time they had a single five pound bag of frozen lo mein noodles. I’ve seen other frozen noodles in their freezers before, too, but the availability seems unreliable.

Buford Highway Farmers Market

Buford Highway Farmers Market in Doraville is an international market like YDFM, but the fresh produce to packaged goods skews much more into the packaged goods direction. Still their produce and meat selections are excellent, but they have aisles dedicated to countries or regions. For east and southeast Asia, they have aisles devoted to Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Thai ingredients. Often if you come here looking for a specific Asian ingredient, they not only have it, but have options.

This is where I originally found fresh Chinese noodles. They have about half an aisle for fresh Chinese wheat noodles, half for fresh Korean wheat noodles (many of these look the same to me), as well as some space for fresh Japanese noodles. On other aisles they have huge selections of dried noodles. At first I was disappointed they didn’t have any fresh Chinese noodles with eggs, but this weekend I found them!.They’re in the refrigerated section of the produce department! Alongside these noodles are fresh rice noodles, too!

Hong Kong Supermarket

I visited Hong Kong Supermarket in Norcross for the first time this past weekend, specifically looking for fresh Chinese noodles. With the refrigerated beer, they have the largest selection of fresh Chinese egg noodles I’ve found so far. Finally I found products labelled Hong Kong-style Chow Mein, Lo Mein, Wonton, etc, labels that matched what I saw in The Wok, Serious Eats, and The Woks of Life. They also had the fresh rice noodles in this section.

Surprisingly I could not find any fresh wheat noodles without egg like Buford Highway Farmers Market has.

Hong Kong Supermarket also has an entire aisle dedicated to dried noodles.

It was after this visit that I found the fresh egg noodles mentioned at Buford Highway Farmers Market. Buford Highway Farmers Market had a smaller and more limited selection than the one at Hong Kong Supermarket.