Hoa Binh Seafood Market

Somebody had broken a glass pot lid and there were shards of broken glass scattered on the floor. The employee with the broom was just chatting with another employee. We then tried to tell him about the hazard (because my friend wearing flip-​flops actually stepped in the glass; thank goodness she wasn’t hurt), but he just replied that he knew about it and continued pushing the broom through another aisle. Go here if you want to make money suing for injuries.

Absolute disaster. Ordered a whole pig earlier this week for a party this weekend, showed up and they had no record of the order. This has completely ruined our party and they blamed us for not following up during the week to confirm the order. Completely incompetent. Horrible, horrible experience.

I wouldn’t recommend getting buying Asian goods here. The old odor, dilapidated interior, and questionable food quality (particularly the seafood) make me feel queasy.
*****
I. SEAFOOD: By seafood, it’s mainly the selection of, err, fishes in the dirty tanks. Everything else is frozen and one should carefully look at the expiration dates.
II. PRODUCE: Definitely a bright spot in this establishment. They have Taiwanese-​this, Thai-​that, etc… Also, if you’re Viet, they have all the veggies for soups such as culantro (phở) and ti to (bun bo hue).
III. ATMOSPHERE/​DÉCOR: It definitely feels like a trip back into the 80s. Actually, I would bet they haven’t renovated since then. Also, the dirty floors make me less inclined to buy anything in there.
IV. PRICES: Like many Asian markets, it’s very affordable.
V. OTHER TIDBITS: They have snacks (maybe a few types from Vietnam Tofu next door), as well as a pretty tasty-​looking BBQ stall near the entrance. The kitchen looked kind of, well, not good.
VI. OVERALL: With so many great markets in the ATL metro, I don’t really have too much of incentive to choose Hoa Bien over places like Buford Highway Farmers Market. I would only maybe go, if I needed a certain vegetable and found it convenient. –This place really needs a makeover.

Agree with some of the other reviews, it’s somewhat ironic that this is called a seafood market. There is barely any seafood! Just some depressed looking tilapia and catfish swimming around. How do you come up with a name for a store but don’t actually have the seafood in there? For that alone, they should be getting a one star, but I’ll give it a fair assessment.
LOTS OF TEA. Maybe it should be called «the house of tea», because there is a serious amount of amazing teas. Authentic oolongs, loose leave jasmine green teas, gunpowder green and really, just about any Asian tea you can imagine. There is a whole isle dedicated to tea and most of it is priced very fairly.
QUESTIONABLE FRESHNESS OF PRODUCE AND MEATS. The place is almost a ghost town, most of the produce like bananas was close to going bad or is already rotten. That’s not to say you can’t get some fresh pickings out of it, but I’d be very hesitant to buy things here.
NO AMEX. It’s Buford highway and you probably know that most of the merchants are too cheap to accept American Express. This is no exception.

One of the many Asian markets on Buford Hwy. The store has many items that you can’t get in a American market. The only downside is the terrible fishy smell. In addition, the store needs a major facelift and a heavy clean.

Like many other Asians raised in Atlanta, I remember my family weekly treks to Hoa Binh for pantry necessities. The place has not aged well however and I only find myself here for the occasional bbq meat tray for parties and events. Which is why I found myself here last Saturday and Sunday.
I needed a tray of bbq meat (their selection includes pork thigh/​ham, ribs (which is the 3-​layers pork with the crunchy skin on top), chicken and duck which is pretty standard fare at most Asian BBQ places. I thought it was going to be an easy, quick in and out; but the whole process took longer than 20 minutes and the store, as usual, had barely any customers.
The butcher first off, does not understand English. Or rather, he may, but he will not communicate with you in anything other than grunts and hand motions. I asked the price for a small tray of the pork ribs, and he shows me a WHOLE roasted pig that they had set aside for a pick-​up. The price tag of said pig was about $ 200 which is way, way more than I intended to spend. I shook my head and showed him i wanted a smaller tray. He shakes his head and starts telling me no, no, you NEED this $ 200 tray here.
We go back and forth, until he finally calls out to a lady and motions for me to go talk to her. Except that she was in the middle of a conversation, clearly saw me there and started to walk away. Really confused at this point, I just follow her and keep saying excuse me until she stops and looks at me. Again, back and forth over the kinds of BBQ I want and I ended up deciding on 5 lbs. of the pork ribs and 1 duck for a total of $ 70.
She writes up my ticket and notes that this is pick up for the very next day. Thinking everything is straight, I go ahead and pay for it. The trouble starts again when I arrive the next day to pick up my order. I had the cranky butcher again and gave him my receipt. He brings me to a side wall and points at a calendar. The manager had mistakenly dated the order for the 29^th instead of the 28^th. The butcher basically waves me away and says, tomorrow! tomorrow!
By now I’ve really hit my limit and raised my voice at him saying No! I don’t need it tomorrow, I need it TODAY! Some customers who were there turned to look, but really I just didn’t care at this point. He continues to shake his head until he finally says ok and starts to cut up the meats. I really don’t understand how difficult this is, i mean come on, the meats are hanging up right there, you have a cleaver and a chopping block so get to it man and do your job! this was not like I asked him to grab me caviar or something else they don’t sell here.
He must really, really not love his job because the tray he used was all bent up and greasy on the outside making it really hard to carry to the car.
Moral of the story is, unless you HAVE to go, just don’t go to Hoa Binh.

For being a self-​proclaimed seafood market, there’s something fishy about the lack thereof. Hoa Binh translates to Peace in Vietnamese and I’m certainly not at peace with the paltry selection and drab upkeep of the establishment.
I do come here for the staples of Vietnamese daily cooking. Your fish sauce and hoisin sauce, Sriracha and soy sauce, rice paper, rice noodles, cha lua and o banh mi. But as for produce, everything generally looks sad and wilted. The meat is menacing. This is all probably due to the operating room lighting and aura of dilapidation.
I’m still going to give these guys three stars for holding out and providing Rhodes aforementioned staples at reasonable cost. But I’m not going to highly recommend this place to anyone unless you know exactly what you’re looking for and provided it’s not meat or produce. The vegetarian frozen section is pretty extensive though so there’s that. Standby.

I have not been here in such a long time. Over the years, this place has declined in its appeal. I’ll hit this place up on occasions, but it’s not the most recommended place. I like buying the thit heo and ga here, but that’s pretty much it. They carry the typical products: fresh seafood, produce, dried products, frozen items, etc. Everything is on the smaller scale though so not much of a variety since this market is just slightly above small and under medium if you look at physical sizes of a store.
As I browed their snack aisles, I found a product that was expired in 2014. Um. There were about a dozen of the product on the shelf so it’s not like it was a single item lost and shuffled around. And the bathrooms were ghetto: the doors for both males and females were held wide open by strings tied to the sink. :/​
The cashier that rung me up this Wed was sweet and friendly. Usually that is not the case. FYI: The minimum to use your credit card is $ 10, and my purchase was $ 9.43. :/​Parking was plentiful since this complex isn’t super popular.

Whenever I see an ethnic or specialty supermarket I’m stopping there. I feed my dogs fresh meat, and these markets always have inexpensive cuts of meat and organs. And a huge fish selection. Today I picked up some pork liver, chicken gizzards, chicken hearts, ground pork, duck feet, duck wings, and 4 mackerels. All in all, it was about 8 pounds of fresh game for $ 12.74! What’s that? About $ 1.59 per pound average? With fish, duck, and pork? Winner Winner, duck wing dinner!

I come to Hoa Binh on the famed Buford Highway for one thing and one thing only — the duck! You can find the duck slow roasted whole and hanging by its neck in the little meat corner to the right as you enter. At $ 17.99 I consider it a deal. You point at the duck you want, the man behind the glass chops it roughly into chunks of flesh and bone and puts it into a take — out carton along with a side of the juice that oozes out as it roasts. Head and all. This duck is greasy, oily and yummy. Beware if you start to try to eat some as you are driving home — you will invariably ruin a perfectly good shirt with a dripping, impossible to remove, grease stain!

When you think of Buford Highway, the first thing that comes to mind is probably FOOD, FOOD, and sadly more FOOD.
Tucked inside this specialty supermarket are racks of deliciously roast pork, duck, quail, and other things worth roasting & begging for you to pick the meat off the bone. The meats are yummy, crunchy, tender, fresh, perfectly cooked, and less fatty than the Chinese BBQ and roasts at Hong Kong BBQ and Ming’s BBQ.
To be frank, my 4 Star Review is for Hoa Binh Deli and the rack of Roast Pork & all the other Roasted stuff on the same rack. I do not want to come here for groceries nor have the desire to shop here. Everything is either expired or rotten. Yuck! The Fish department is long overdue for new fishes. Ahaha.
Overall, Hoa Binh have the best tasting Roasted Pork. My family have been coming here for at least 15 years, and we still drive a good 30 minutes to satisfy our cravings. What can I say, some people eat to live while others live to eat.

From the hot foods, I purchased the roasted pork with rice. The roasted pork was dry, flavorless, and unappetizing; not worth the $ 6.50. The man working it was equally as dry and unpleasant.
I also purchased a bag of chips. I thought I’d be safe since they’re a bag of chips, right? Nope, wrong. I ate one chip and threw the rest of it away. The bag tasted so old that it tasted ONLY like the oil it was cooked in. Disgusting.
The only decent thing I bought was the Korean BBQ sauce, and it was overpriced at $ 3.50.
The employees are all unfriendly and dour. The store reeks. The store has a Viet name, but no one inside speaks Vietnamese, or English, for that matter.
What a sad excuse for an Asian grocery store. This is not a place you should go to shop for the week; it should be considered as a corner market should you ever need anything in a pinch. Never again!

A supermarket that’s not so well-​stocked. Whilst it’s big it doesn’t really have a lot of variety. But they have quite a selection of vegetarian selection.
If it were not for the weather threatening to rain, I would’ve returned everything in my basket and proceeded to H-​mart.
Category: «Will think twice before going again»

I am very suprised this place is still open. There are many other bigger market located on Buford hwy that are much more cleaner, nicer service and more options than this market.
I stop by here on a Tuesday to pick up some fruits since they often have unique fruits on sale but I was greatly disappointed. After stepping in I quickly realized why I stopped going here.
The place smells, the fruit selections are about five options and they are really unfriendly. The cashiers just look me up and down as I enter instead of greeting or at least smile at me.
Anyways, so I wanted some yellow sweet mangoes when I stopped by here, took a 30 seconds walk around their fruits and veggies section and there was no yellow mangoes so I settled with green mangoes. I also picked up a sticky rice snack.
Went up to the cash register and the cashier inform me that it’s 3 $ and some change. So I took out my debit card. Then she informed me that to use my debit card, I need to purchase a minimum of 5 $. (Wth). So I decided to get a small cup of sugar cane juice. That’s 2.50. Then I paid. And then I told her I would like the juice to have no ice. She informed me that with no ice it’s .50cents more. Wth?!? To not put something in my drink is going to cost me more. So I said forget it. Then the cashier behind her turn around and told me that usually for customers to pay with their debit/​credit card… they have to spend at least 15 $. By this point I’m fed up and told her that’s too late cause I already paid. I then picked up my sugarcane drink and walk out. And believe me. I will not be returning.

As a foodie I appreciate being able to find authentic cultural staples and oddities like dried mushroom powder, spiced sesame oil and dumplings.
The market is somewhat small and is minus the flair of more traditional groceries but I interpreted this as charm.
I was able to purchase a real wok and all the required ingredients for homemade fried rice and coconut soup including the fancy volcano soup warmer.
Interesting selections, authenticity, great value and helpful service are the reasons I will return.

Like many other reviewers, I only come here to buy roast pork by the pound. It’s not the cleanest or nicest establishment, but hey, I grew up eating at worse, so it’s all good for me.
I don’t have the need nor the want to buy anything else from here, so I don’t have much else to add. If you are in the Buford Hwy area and want good roast pork, come here and don’t go to Ming’s. If you’re OTP, go to the one inside Great Wall supermarket in Duluth.

Hoa Binh is a Vietnamese grocery store located on Buford Highway just south of Chamblee Tucker Road in the same shopping center as Phở Bac, Penang, Mini Hot Pot, and Viet Tofu. This store has been around for many years and I’m surprised it’s still open because there are many newer, nicer, and more well-​stocked Asian supermarkets in the Atlanta area.
I figure Hoa Binh is still in business because it stocks Vietnamese groceries and goods that you can’t find at a Korean supermarket like Super H Mart or Assi. Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think Hoa Binh and Hong Kong Supermarket (also Vietnamese owned) are two of the only places in Atlanta to find whole jackfruit.
I once bought jackfruit from Hoa Binh and it was OK. Every other time I’ve been to Hoa Binh, the jackfruit selection has been miserable. You really have to catch them on a good day. In most of my experiences, the jackfruit has been spoiled and flies were flying around them. I can’t believe management would allow spoiled jackfruit to sit on display like that. It’s right at the entrance too, so everyone sees it.
Produce, meat, and seafood are sold here, though the quality does not look very good. This is one of those stereotypical Asian supermarkets that is dirty and smells weird.
I have gotten freshly pressed sugarcane juice and it was tasty. You can also pick up French bread (baguettes) to make your own banh mi and various pre-​packaged and ready-​to-​eat Vietnamese snacks and desserts, similar to what’s sold at nearby Viet Tofu.
If Hoa Binh was out in the suburbs or in an area without several Asian supermarkets, I’d probably give them 3 stars, but since they’re located near a Super H Mart and the Buford Highway Farmers Market (two markets which are clearly better), I’m giving them only 2 stars. I guess this place is OK if you’re looking for Vietnamese groceries and don’t want to venture OTP. Otherwise, you should head to Hong Kong Supermarket.

This market is dying. I’ve been coming here on and off since I was a child and they are getting less and less customers over the years. My latest trip was to pick up some duck eggs for the boys. My friend has a particular method of picking out small to medium sized ducks but it was quite time consuming. The cashiers were staring and whispering to each other the entire time we were there. but meh. While he was doing that, I walked around to see what else the store had to offer but I wasn’t pleased. The store had a very pungent smell and other than the duck eggs, I don’t think I would purchase much else on the basis of freshness unless it was canned or boxed.

If you purchase any roast pig from here, be careful. I’ve always bought roast pig from here but recently bought one that was bad and spoiled. Don’t even think about confronting the owners; the two sisters will deny it and make it look like its your fault and that your’e the liar. Buyer beware.
I mostly love their roast pig and think it’s one of the best in Atlanta but the customer service here is lacking. Don’t love it enough to put up with the bitchy lady owner.

This funky little Asian market is my go to spot to pick up incense and tea after a visit to @ H Massage.
The entrance is flocked with the saddest, scrappiest, overpriced plant collection.
They have delicious mystery packaged food by the registers (no label/​no sign, just a price and most are $ 1.99). I picked up some purple coconut rice with secret purée wrapped in little pockets (one was yellow lentil paste, I think). It came with peanut sugar. Mmm… Also some nice spongy damp sweet rice cakes that reminded me of Indian idli.
The roast pork looked amazing. Want to try it next time-​I just wanted something light today.
Seafood area is a bit stinky and scares me.
Cheers~