Ask people where to buy groceries in Utah Valley and you will hear the same handful of supermarket names. Ask people who cook Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese or Filipino food at home, and you will hear about a short block of State Street in Orem instead. The valley's Asian markets are small, independent and stocked around what their own customers actually cook, which makes them both cheaper and deeper than the international aisle of a mainstream store, and a little intimidating on a first visit.
This guide is about how to use them. It covers where they are, what each part of the store holds, how to read a noodle wall or a soy-sauce shelf without knowing the language on the label, what to buy on a first trip, and when a drive north actually makes sense. Stores change hands and stock, so treat specifics as a starting point and check with the store.
The Short Answer
The concentration is North State Street in Orem: Asian Market Orem at 266 North State, the larger store, and First Oriental Market at 286 North State, the smaller Korean-focused shop a few doors up the same block. There is no H Mart in Utah County; the chain's only Utah store is in West Jordan, about forty minutes up I-15. For a first trip, buy a light soy sauce, toasted sesame oil, rice vinegar, rice, fresh noodles or tofu, a chili condiment and one unfamiliar vegetable. Ask the staff when you are stuck, and bring cash as a backup.
Where to Go
Our guide to grocery stores in Provo and Orem covers the valley's full grocery landscape, including these markets, and it makes the point that most published lists name only one of the two State Street stores when both are right there.
Asian Market Orem, at 266 North State Street, is the larger of the pair: fresh produce you will not find in a mainstream store, a meat counter with fresh and marinated cuts, fresh noodles and tofu, gallon jugs of soy sauce, frozen dumplings, and a pantry range spanning Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Southeast Asian cooking at prices well below the supermarkets.
First Oriental Market, at 286 North State Street, is a few doors up: smaller, Korean-focused, family-run, and by regulars' accounts long established in that spot. Its Korean selection is tighter and deeper than its larger neighbor's.
The practical value of the pairing is that if one store does not have what you need, you walk twenty yards rather than driving to Salt Lake County.
Rancho Markets, at 1700 North State Street in Provo, is the Latin American anchor rather than an Asian market, but it is worth knowing for overlapping ingredients, and our guide to Latino markets and panaderías covers that side of the valley's grocery scene.
Beyond these, small shops and market counters come and go across the valley, often serving specific communities. If a restaurant you like has a market attached, that market is usually worth a look.
Why These Stores Exist Here
A visitor might expect a valley this size to support one modest international aisle and nothing more. Two things explain why it supports much more than that.
The first is the returned-missionary effect. An unusual share of adults here have spent two years living in another country, eating its food daily and learning to cook at least a little of it. They come home wanting the ingredients, and a market that stocks them has a ready customer base that most towns of this size do not have.
The second is the student population. Two large universities bring students and families from across Asia and the Pacific, and they shop for what they grew up eating rather than for what is convenient. That is why the shelves carry three kinds of soy sauce rather than one, and why the produce turns over fast enough to stay fresh.
The result is a grocery scene that outperforms the valley's reputation, and it is the reason the restaurants have the ingredients to be good. Walking an Asian market here is a faster education in what this valley can actually cook than reading any list of restaurants.
The H Mart Question
It comes up constantly, so here is the answer from our grocery guide: there is no H Mart in Utah County. The chain's only Utah store is in West Jordan, in Salt Lake County, roughly forty minutes up I-15 from Provo depending on traffic at the Point of the Mountain.
Whether the drive is worth it depends on the trip. H Mart is a different category of store, with a full seafood counter, a produce range the Orem markets cannot match on volume, and a food hall. That makes it a good monthly stock-up or a weekend outing, and a poor choice for a weeknight ingredient. The two State Street markets cover most of what most cooks need.
Our grocery guide also notes a recurring confusion: reviews of the Orem stores sometimes mention an H Mart opening as though it were local. Those reviewers mean West Jordan.
How These Stores Are Organized
The layout of a small Asian grocery can feel random on a first visit. It is not; it is organized around cooking rather than around categories a supermarket buyer invented.
The pantry aisles carry sauces, pastes, vinegars, oils, dried goods and canned items, usually grouped loosely by cuisine. Expect several shelves of soy sauce, a wall of noodles, and a section of chili pastes and crisps.
The refrigerated cases hold fresh noodles, tofu in several firmnesses, kimchi and other pickles, fish cakes, and prepared banchan at Korean-leaning stores.
The freezers are often the best value in the store: dumplings and buns, seafood, roti and paratha, and frozen vegetables and fruit that are hard to find fresh here.
The produce section carries the vegetables the mainstream stores skip, and it turns over quickly because it is what the regulars come for.
The meat and seafood counter, where there is one, cuts for these cuisines: thin-sliced beef and pork for hot pot and barbecue, pork belly in slabs, whole fish, and marinated meats ready for a grill.
The snack and drink aisles are where children and students end up, and where a first visit usually gets expensive.
Reading the Shelves
Soy sauce. The shelf looks bewildering until you learn what the words on the label are telling you. Light or thin soy sauce is the everyday seasoning and what most Chinese recipes mean by soy sauce. Dark soy sauce is thicker, less salty and used mainly for color and depth in braises. Japanese shoyu is rounder and less sharp, good for dipping and dressings. Korean soup soy sauce is saltier and lighter in color, made for soups rather than stir-fries. Tamari is a wheat-free Japanese style. Buy one light and one dark and you can cook most of what you want.
Noodles. Dried wheat noodles, rice noodles in several widths, glass noodles made from sweet potato or mung bean, ramen, udon, soba and fresh refrigerated noodles all live in different parts of the store. Match the noodle to the dish rather than the brand: thin rice sticks for pho-style soups, wide flat rice noodles for stir-fries, chewy wheat noodles for dan dan, glass noodles for japchae.
Rice. Short-grain for Japanese and Korean cooking, jasmine for Thai and much Southeast Asian food, basmati for South Asian, glutinous or sweet rice for desserts and sticky rice. Big bags cost far less per pound, and rice keeps.
Chili. Chili crisp and chili oil for finishing; doubanjiang, the fermented chili-bean paste, for Sichuan cooking; gochujang and gochugaru for Korean; sambal for Southeast Asian. One of each covers a lot of ground, and they last for months in the refrigerator.
Vinegars and wines. Rice vinegar is the workhorse; black vinegar is malty and good for dumpling dipping sauces; Shaoxing wine is the standard Chinese cooking wine. Note that Shaoxing wine contains alcohol, which matters to many households here; a dry sherry substitute is also alcoholic, and recipes work without it, with a little less depth.
Labels in more than one language. Many products carry English somewhere on the package, often on a sticker on the back. If you cannot find it, a photo and a translation app will usually settle it, and the staff will settle it faster.
The Produce Worth Learning
Bok choy and baby bok choy. Crisp stems and dark leaves; halve, sear and steam with garlic. The most useful first vegetable to learn.
Napa cabbage. Sweet and tender, the base of kimchi, dumpling fillings and hot pot.
Chinese broccoli, or gai lan. Deeper and more bitter than broccoli; excellent blanched with oyster sauce.
Daikon radish. Mild and juicy; used raw in salads, braised in soups and pickled.
Asian eggplant. Long, thin and sweeter than the globe kind, with thinner skin and fewer seeds.
Fresh herbs. Thai basil, cilantro by the bunch, shiso, perilla leaf, and mint at a fraction of supermarket prices.
Aromatics. Ginger, galangal, lemongrass, scallions and fresh chilies, usually cheaper and fresher than at a mainstream store.
Mushrooms. Enoki, shiitake, king oyster and shimeji, fresh and dried.
If you buy nothing else, buy one vegetable you do not know each visit and look up two ways to cook it. That habit is how most people here learned to shop these stores.
The Freezer and the Prepared Counter
The freezer aisle deserves its own attention. Frozen dumplings and buns are a weeknight dinner that takes ten minutes. Frozen seafood, including whole fish, shrimp and squid, is often better and cheaper than fresh in a landlocked state, because it was frozen at sea. Frozen roti and paratha turn a simple curry into a meal. And frozen fruit, including durian, jackfruit, lychee and mango, opens up desserts that no local store carries.
Some markets also run a food counter. Dumpling Bao operates inside the Asian Market at 266 North State Street in Orem, as our guide to it explains: it is not a separate storefront and has no street frontage of its own, so you walk in through the grocery. Counters like that are frequently among the cheapest good meals in the valley, and our restaurant guides to Chinese, Korean, Thai and Indian food in Provo and Orem cover the sit-down side.
A First-Trip Shopping List
For anyone who wants to start cooking from these stores, this list is enough for a week of dinners.
- Light soy sauce and, if you cook braises, a small bottle of dark soy sauce
- Toasted sesame oil, used as a finishing oil rather than for frying
- Rice vinegar
- A bag of rice in the style you like
- Fresh or dried noodles, one wheat and one rice
- Firm tofu
- A chili condiment: chili crisp, gochujang or doubanjiang
- Aromatics: ginger, garlic, scallions
- One vegetable you have not cooked, plus a bunch of fresh herbs
- A bag of frozen dumplings for the night you do not want to cook
That is a pantry. Everything above keeps, most of it is cheaper here than anywhere else in the valley, and it turns a supermarket chicken breast into half a dozen different dinners.
Cooking From the Markets: Three Easy Starts
A weeknight noodle bowl. Cook fresh or dried wheat noodles, toss with light soy sauce, a spoon of chili crisp, a little toasted sesame oil and a splash of black vinegar, then top with blanched bok choy and a jammy egg. Fifteen minutes, and every ingredient comes from one aisle.
Dumplings, properly. Pan-fry frozen dumplings flat-side down in a little oil until the bottoms brown, add a splash of water, cover, and steam until the water is gone. Uncover and crisp the bottoms again. Serve with black vinegar and slivered ginger. It is the best value in the freezer aisle by a wide margin.
Tofu that people actually like. Press firm tofu under a plate for twenty minutes, cube it, toss it in cornstarch and fry until the edges are golden, then finish with soy sauce, garlic and scallions. Cheap, fast, and the dish that converts skeptics.
None of these needs equipment beyond a pot and a pan, which is worth saying because the biggest barrier for most first-time shoppers is not the ingredients but the assumption that they need a wok and a technique they do not have.
Shopping With Dietary Restrictions
Asian markets can be either very easy or very tricky, depending on what you are avoiding.
Halal and kosher. Some products are certified and others are not, and cuisine is not a reliable guide. Our food guides make the same point: confirm individually rather than assuming. Check labels for certification marks, and ask at the counter about meat.
Gluten. Standard soy sauce contains wheat; tamari is the wheat-free Japanese style. Rice noodles, glass noodles and rice papers are naturally gluten-free, while most wheat noodles and many sauces are not.
Alcohol. Cooking wines such as Shaoxing contain alcohol, and some marinades and sauces include it. Many households here avoid it; most recipes work without it.
Shellfish and fish. Fish sauce, oyster sauce, shrimp paste and dried shrimp appear in many sauces and pastes, sometimes in small print. Read carefully if you have an allergy.
Peanuts and tree nuts. Common in Southeast Asian sauces and in many snacks, and cross-contact is a real risk in small stores with shared equipment.
Practical Notes
Bring cash as a backup. Most stores take cards, but small markets sometimes have minimums or card outages.
Bring your own bags, and expect to bag your own groceries at some stores.
Go early or midweek for the best produce and the calmest aisles. Weekend afternoons are busy.
Check dates on refrigerated items, as you would anywhere.
Ask questions. These are small stores, and the people behind the counter usually know exactly which of three similar bottles you want. That conversation is the fastest education available.
Sunday hours. Our grocery guide reports that the State Street Asian markets keep close to normal Sunday hours, which makes them useful on a day when other stores cut back. Confirm before a special trip.
Beyond the Groceries
The markets are also a window into the valley's international community, which is larger and more established than its reputation suggests. Many of the valley's residents have lived abroad, many students come from across Asia and the Pacific, and both show up in what the shelves carry. Our guide to international students in Provo covers that side of the valley, and the Orem Asian Festival is the year's biggest public expression of it.
The Short Version
Utah Valley's Asian grocery scene centers on two stores a few doors apart on North State Street in Orem: Asian Market Orem at 266 North State and First Oriental Market at 286 North State. There is no H Mart in the county, and the nearest is in West Jordan, worth an occasional stock-up rather than a weeknight trip. Learn to read the soy-sauce, noodle and chili shelves by what they are for rather than by brand, buy one new vegetable each visit, raid the freezer aisle, and ask the staff when you are stuck. A first trip with the list above sets up a pantry that pays for itself quickly.
Related Guides
Frequently Asked Questions
Where are the Asian markets in Utah Valley?
Is there an H Mart in Utah County?
Are Asian markets cheaper than regular supermarkets?
What should I buy on a first visit?
Which soy sauce should I buy?
Do the markets sell prepared food?
Are the Asian markets open on Sunday?
What if I cannot find an ingredient?
