Paulius Musteikis
The green papaya salad is is a deli sleeper hit.
I’d driven past the Madison Oriental Market on Fish Hatchery Road hundreds of times without stopping. Other Asian groceries nearby on South Park Street have bigger selections — like Yue Wah, with its global approach to its stock, or Oriental Food Mart, which specializes in Korean items.
But Madison Oriental has something the others don’t — a small deli in the rear of the store, specializing in Hmong and a few South Asian dishes.
The market shares a nondescript building with a laundromat, next door to a towing service. This is the part of the review where certain food writers love to imply that the more unlikely the location, the tastier the food. It’s true.
You’ll immediately see a few items sitting under heat lamps — long, red Hmong pork sausages, similar to kielbasa, $3 each; Hmong egg rolls, $1; Hmong stuffed chicken wings, $2; pork ribs (prices vary according to size); a whole tilapia steamed in a banana leaf, $6; roast chickens with crispy skins, $4.50.
The egg roll is passable for something that’s been sitting under a heat lamp, but its interior is mostly cabbage; skip it in favor of the Hmong stuffed chicken wings, which have the egg roll filling and delicate, translucent cellophane noodles packed inside the crispy skin of the wing. These are decent-sized wings so you’re likely to get a few meaty bites of chicken, too.
The whole tilapia — head, tail and all — is plain, a moist preparation for a mild fish. It’s satisfying, but picking through the many bones makes eating it a labor-intensive endeavor.
But don’t rely on the ready-to-eat case. Order a dish off the small menu, even though it will take longer to be made from scratch.
The pungent, cilantro-spiked beef laab (sometimes spelled larb and pronounced something like “lup!”) is my first pick. It’s made with finely minced beef, as it should be, more flavorful than ground beef. The laab, with its hot chili, lime and fish sauce dressing and plentiful minced purple onions, is not for the faint of heart: It is a vibrant, penetrating dish. A side of the slightly sweet purple sticky rice is a great and perhaps necessary pairing. Chicken laab is also an option, and it’s similar, though the beef delivers more flavor.
Vying for top honors with the laab is the green papaya salad, another sweet/sour/salty/spicy/fish-saucy Southeast Asian flavor kaleidoscope that’s quite good and also made fresh to order. Again, a side of the sticky rice balances the intense flavors.
Pho also comes made-to-order. It’s straightforward: broth, beef, noodles, bean sprouts. If you’re looking for a great bowl of pho, head to a place that specializes in it like Saigon Noodles or Pho Nam, for more choices of meat.
There are a few tables, perhaps best used for waiting for an order rather than dining in. Have a bubble tea and browse the grocery aisles for a novel noodle or Asian snack. The Thai coconut rolls, crispy tube-shaped cookies that shatter on first bite, make just as good an appetizer as they do a dessert.
Madison Oriental Market Deli
02119 Fish Hatchery Rd, 8:30 am-7 pm daily, $1-$7