Chung GE Oriental Market

Good local Korean market, they have a nice selection of Korean bbq meat.

It’s located in the Devens shopping mall. The other Asian Market in Ayer is closed, and this one is the next closest to me.
Let me start with the good things. Theres a decent selection of housewares and kitchenwares. I’ve never bought cigarettes or lottery tickets here, but they sell them. They have lots of yummy sweet snacks. Lotte Koala, Meiji dipping sticks, Pepero (like Pocky but not as good) and Cracker Koreen: sugary glazed crunchy things. There’s a good selection of cakes. Decent selection of ramen and dried noodles. Nice selection of drinks and frozen dumplings. They carry my favorite veggie dumplings here. I’ve only tried one of the drinks (a Japanese green tea) and it was good. Rice and nori is good too. These are all things that don’t really go bad, mind you.
They don’t really have any spicy snacks other than wasabi peas. As another reviewer said, the produce is scant and questionable. The place could use a cleaning. I don’t see a lot of other people shopping here.
I really wanted to like this place. In the seven times that I’ve shopped here, I’ve gotten three items that were completely inedible because they were off. The first was Miso salad dressing, that on closer examination I saw had expired in 2005. 2005! The next was pickled radish, which tasted like nail polish remover. I never had pickled radish from that brand that tasted like that. The expiration date was 2015, so I can only surmise that it was not stored properly. It reeked so bad that I had to take the trash out. The third thing was frozen aburaage tofu which was obviously off. Actually, the whole freezer in the store smells off, and I should have just stopped right there and put the item back. But don’t take my word for it, go there and smell the freezer for yourself. The oil on the tofu was rancid and sour smelling. My family was curious as to why I wanted to throw it out. They tried it and they all spat it out, it was so bad. We eat aburaage tofu all the time! The sour, putrid flavor lingered in our mouths for hours. I don’t understand how the owner sold these things to me with a straight face.
I feel really bad about the whole experience. It looks like the place is struggling, so I want to shop here, but I don’t want to risk buying something that is off, and I don’t want to take it back because I feel bad. The chili sauces here are brown when they are red in other stores. I’ve never seen brown sushi vinegar before. There was no expiration date on it. One of my Korean friends told me I would be better off shopping at the Asian market in Littleton. That market doesn’t carry the dumplings I like, but I will take my business there.

I really want to like this market. It is a real Asian market, yet the selection is not very good. The produce is scant and some of it is questionable. Having 2 markets in Ayer helped somewhat, but the Woo Ri seeming to be closed now means there’s no competition.
I’ll probably keep going here, because there’s nothing as close, though I spend an inordinate amount of time wandering the aisles looking for things that seem to be in abundance in the other markets I have shopped.

I just stumbled across this market over the weekend when picking up food at Ah Gin Wong’s (they are both in the somewhat rundown Devens Shopping Plaza). Chung Ge is a bigger store than Woo Ri, though they carry mostly the same products, and are only about a mile apart.
They have everything you could need for Korean or even Japanese cooking. Fresh vegetables, a fish market, sauces and condiments, noodles, rice, huge sacks of red pepper!, plenty of kimchi, snacks, drinks, and frozen goods.
I will still visit both stores, but might come here more often simply because they have more items. But I can’t really recommend one over the other — both are great stores.