By West Side Rag
H Mart, the long-awaited and popular Korean grocer, is opening a second store on the Upper West Side on Friday .
The new neighborhood store opens at 11 a.m. at 210-220 Amsterdam Avenue, between West 69th and 70th Streets. The first store is located at 2828 Broadway at West 110th Street.
When West Side Rag visited the new store Friday around an hour before its opening time, employees were loading in the final packages and making finishing touches.
H Mart sells everything from ramen and rice, to meat, seafood, and produce, to snacks, canned food, kimchi, and much more. The grocer is incredibly popular.
The new Upper West Side location is replacing a Rite Aid that shuttered in 2021.
Happy shopping!
We originally neglected to mention the West 110th Street H Mart, which has been corrected.
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Yay! I like the variety, the options (and the fact that this is not yet another bank or, slightly worse, another shuttered storefront…). I recommend the fresh mochi (when they have it) and the frozen buns with red bean paste. And of course, there’s everything else! Yummy yummy.
What kind of supermarket in 2024 doesn’t have an automatic entrance door? Sorry, people pushing strollers or using wheelchairs or walkers. We were too cheap to put in a door that opens by itself when you approach it.
LOL. This is your issue?
Ah, the blissful ignorance of the able-bodied.
Perhaps you might make a visit to the store and see what the situation is. If the store is not accessible, you might speak with a manager and call your local representative.
Take another look at the larger photo, clearly showing automatic doors.
Take another look at the signs on the doors. The entrance door which I was talking about is clearly not automatic.
It is also automatic.
there is an automatic door in the picture…
Yeah, the exit door. I was very clearly talking about the entrance.
That’s automatic also. Probably a space thing. on to the next gripe. The music inside is more fitting for a H&M in midtown.
I’ll take a closer look when it’s not so crowded. There was a “opening day” gift because I brought something. A nice set of bamboo chopsticks worth about $2 retail?
Excited and also that this brand carries interesting yet affordable groceries. Hopefully it helps put pressure on some of the other grocers.
Intersting store, but so expensive with loud horrible music..
To Commenter. There is an automatic door. Look at the other photos.
For god’s sake do you people not read the signs. The entrance door is clearly not automatic, which is the one I was talking about.
Consider leaving your keyboard and going to the store, where you will find not one but TWO automatic doors. Wild stuff.
Just got back from there. It is WONDERFUL!
Oops! I saw an automatic door, but I see now it’s just for exit 🙄
Interesting but we need so much in this neighborhood that it’s irrelevant. Rite Aid was convenient and well stocked with the best prices and opened late. We needed them. BBBeyond had everything; now we need to cross town for most household items . It’s an inconvenient place to live not to mention the filthy streets , bottle machines in the middle of Broadway and wandering homeless from over abundance of shelters. Empty storefronts block after block. NO upside to living in this neighborhood.
It’s a great option to have, especially for those of us looking for ingredients otherwise relegated to the “ethnic” aisle at the grocery store, which usually has a tiny selection. So much easier now to find frozen dumplings, steamed buns, asian condiments, etc. Check out the memoir Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner.
I like H mart but most items are overpriced. Also, every month the price is changed. …
Items are not overpriced. They’re just higher priced than you would like to pay.
Great news!
I can’t wait to see how they compare to the other UWS one. I always love going there and trying new foods, but this store is so much closer.
Maybe a dumb question, but why is it called H Mart?
If you believe what you read on the Internet, the “H” in “H Mart” stands for Han Ah Reum (한아름), the store’s original name. The phrase is a combination of the Korean word “Han,” meaning “one,” and “Ah Reum,” a transliteration of the English word “arm” in hangeul, the Korean writing system. More poetically, it signifies “an armful [of groceries],” or even “an embrace.”
I can’t reply to anyone specifically from my Android phone, but I can start a new string.
@ commenter: The entrance door with the handle opened automatically on opening day, full stop.
I was just there. Very crowded yet no line at checkout.
It’s both expensive and reasonable, depending on what you’re buying. Rao’s pasta sauce is $12.99 while it is about $8.50 at expensive Morton Williams. But I guess you don’t go to an Asian market for Italian sauces.
I did not buy anything but saw some interesting things I’ll try in the future. Nice to have new options.
I agree about the pasta sauce, but I was surprised to see rice at their Koreatown location was more expensive than Whole Foods. Maybe it was because I wasn’t buying 10-pound sack. I have yet to find one store in NYC that is consistently the ‘lowest’ in all prices, which is why, now that I’m retired and able to do so, I shop multiple stores to get the best deals.
The place is a waste of time. They have a tiny fresh vegetables and fruit section and selection and they don’t have a fresh seafood section. It’s mostly just packaged goods and most items are more expensive than the stores around it. If you have been to a large H Mart you know what it is missing. It’s a shame.
yeah, the hmarts in manhattan are pretty expensive. all the ones outside, while still pricey, at least have sales
HMart has great food. Unfortunately, it’s like a plastic farm. Absolutely everything is packaged in plastic clamshells. It amazes me that people who are understandably unwilling to drink out of plastic bottles out of fear of ingesting microplastics eat out of plastic clamshells. Even worse for all of us and the planet, only 5% of plastics put in the recycling bin are actually recycled. Plastic consumption is much greater than recycling capacity and, there are so many types of plastics used it is impossible to recycle most even if we had the capacity.
Plastic clamshells as food packaging was started by Driscoll in 1994. Prior to that, most of the food we ate was packaged in cardboard or paper bags. Companies like HMart and Whole Foods package items from produce to sandwiches to cupcakes in plastic to reduce labor and packaging costs. They don’t care about our health or the health of our environment.
Whenever possible, don’t buy food packaged in single-use plastic. Better for your health, better for the planet.
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Did it take me 15 minutes to figger this out even though they explained all this above and even highlighted it in yellow? Yes it did.
Where’s upper west side location? In Bay Area?