Lunch find: Lin Asian Market's $10-or-less Burmese boxes pack huge flavors

Riverside grocery offers Thai sausage, Burmese soup, tofu noodles, coconut pudding

Lin Asian Market in Riverside is still serving freshly cooked Burmese and Thai dishes, even though the restaurant next door closed years ago.

The kitchen at 929 Tonawanda St. still works. The proof is stacked next to the market’s cash register, in to-go boxes, starting around noon. There’s usually four or five meal choices, most at the princely rate of $6.

One is mohinga, the traditional Burmese breakfast soup. It’s a catfish broth golden with turmeric and thickened slightly with chickpea flour. Vegetables usually include sliced banana stem and flower, which looks like celery, with a milder taste. Rice noodles, fresh cilantro, and long green beans come with a securely rubber-banded bag of broth to assemble at home.

Thai-style pork sausage, made with coarse chunks of meat and glass noodles, flavored with lemongrass and chile, goes for $10, served with a slab of fresh cabbage and chiles. Lin sells the same sausage for $8 a pound, if you’re interested in taking some home.

I did.

Fish steaks braised in chile broth and herbs made an appearance last week.

There’s usually two desserts, as well, at $4. Coconut pudding, with toasted coconut, is one frequent flyer.

The store has deep aisles of Asian groceries, especially Burmese, Thai, Chinese, and Korean. That’s where I get my coconut milk, a 98-ounce can of Chaokoh for $15.

Freezers lining one wall are filled with meat, fish, and myriad interesting ingredients. Have a look around if you cook Asian food, know someone who does, or just want lunch.

Lin Asian Market

929 Tonawanda St., Riverside, 716-948-9235

Hours: 9 a.m.-8 p.m. daily.

(Seen something good to eat in a neighborhood market that the world should know about? Send me a photo and the address, at andrew@fourbites.net.)

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