Go to an Asian supermarket and you can find the best deals on good, fresh food anywhere aside from a warehouse club, with the added plus that warehouse clubs usually don’t sell whole salmon for 2.99 a pound, or flahs-frozen fresh tilapia for 1.99 a pound. Warehouse clubs also don’t have people who would clean up and cut a fish according to what you want—as long as it falls under the 5 to 7 or even 10 different ways of doing it illustrated on a HUD above the fishmonger area.

Aside from cheap deals on fresh mainstays, you can also find the kind of ingredients you first hear of in shows like Iron Chef, although I have never seen those sticky soybeans (which look positively gross) or Tokyo X pork. And while we’re on the subject of fatty meat, I would like to introduce you, dear friends, to a staple that we tend to get everytime we visit the Asian grocer: “short ribs,” cut “Korean style,” which basically means thinly sliced.

There are plenty ways of preparing this most sinful of cut of beef, but my favorite is toi simply marinate it for half an hour in my favorite grilling or barbecueing marinade and just cooking them in the oven for about 30 to 45 minutes.

Let’s just say the ones that we tend to get are so fatty that, despite the fat being rendered as the ribs get cooked, I could almost imagine my heart begging for mercy with every bite I bring down my gullet. Live, love and urk, people. Give it a try even once, ’cause life’s too short to miss this.