Southgate Oriental Grocery

Love this place. They are always nice and helpful.

Great small grocery store. Has the essentials, and has a very homey feel. The young guy there is super helpful and wants you to leave happy. Their kimbap is really amazing… But, the star of the show is the Kim Chee. Super spicy and they def added some sweetness to it. It taste just like my grandmothers. I don’t usually buy the veggies here, they have a very small selection.

Yummie bibimbap, fish cake and marinated veggie side dishes!

This place is great! Small little grocery store with awesome produce department. Nice selection of noodles, dumplings and tofu; fresh and frozen.
I load up on fresh kimchee — cucumber and cabbage are delicious and made fresh daily. They also have fresh rice rolls (wrapped in seaweed with veggies inside) by checkout that are often warm.
Large assortment of cooking oils, teas and hot chili sauces.
Nice staff. Great Factoria location, across from Factoria square.

Man I can’t get enough of this grocery store. Looking for Korean goods, come here! It’s worth the trek. I love hmart but this place is just too awesome. Also, they are a mom-​and-​pops/​local business, so you gotta love that aesthetic. I’ve been delving into cooking Korean cooking lately and they have everything you need! Plus, their kitchen makes the best, in my opinion, kim chee! And they offer the best selection of side dishes too! I try to make come here after class at BC to pick things up! Also, they are really great with their customers too!

This is the ONLY grocery store I would get kimchi! They have good bakery too!

I love this place. I love picking up bread at bolangerie and buy kimchi here. I heard h-​mart is coming soon though. I live in Bellevue downtown. H mart next to petsmart is closer to me.

South Gate is a small Korean grocery store tucked away in a small strip of business across from Factoria Square. Despite it’s diminutive size, there is a pretty good selection of non-​perishables, drinks, frozen foods, snacks, and pre-​made pickled side dishes and even baked pastries. I stop in every once in awhile to pick up a few things, as well as some freshly made kim bap (basically like a Korean sushi roll) band various pickled side dishes from. This was one of the first Asian grocery stores in Bellevue which I hope will be around for much longer even with the other assorted Asian markets that have opened up since.

This is my favorite groccer~! They have real fresh Korean cusine Yummy side dishes~! I even spoke with owner of restaurant~! He was really cool dude ready to help~! Small but quaint and nice atmosphere~! :D

Tiny but mighty, this Korean grocery store is packed with my favorites. Plenty of banchan to choose from, delicious snacks and toasty tea fill the isles
Feel like making it yourself? Go to the back corner and you’ll find all the fresh ingredients. From there take the isle to the cash register where you can pick up spices for pickling and marinades.
I always grab some freshly made Gimbap for the ride home. Yum!

This place is jam packed with stuff, and I loved the food bar of freshly made banchan!!! It totally reminded me of being back in San Francisco, shopping with me mom when I was kid. The kimbap was yummy and I also purchased their pre-​marinaded bulgogi, which that was pretty good too.

Still loving this place! Even though Paldo has closed and their prices have bumped up a little, they are still decently priced (what you save on gas and time by not having to go to Federal Way/​Lynnwood is totally worth it). Even when Paldo was open I preferred this place because of the personal interaction/​homey feel of the store so I don’t think there is any loss there.
I can get just about anything Korean food related that I would need here, from «homemade» banchan (side dishes) to kim chee, rice cakes, ramen, chips/​crackers, tofu, frozen ribs and pork belly, fresh «Korean» vegetables, and the all important rice and seaweed.
Small and family owned they work really hard to ensure they have a good variety of what you might need to get a healthy good Korean meal on your table. The service is efficient and friendly (for Korean standards). Their ready made foods like kimbap (Korea sushi), japchae (glass noodles), jok bal (pigs feet), jun (fish/​meat patties with egg batter), etc are all pretty tasty and make a great substitute when I’m just to tired to cook dinner. Now I made myself hungry… darn… well, come shop here and enjoy!

I love this little market! They have super fresh veggies, good Korean treats, and really good banchan. I have bought frozen beef here before and the quality is really good too. I also LOVE their kimbap, kimchi pancakes, and rice cakes. This place is far better than it looks. Also make sure to check out the Korean bakery next door.

Fresh kimbap everyday for 3.99 and nearly every day they have Korean pancake and japchae (only 5.99)!! And, so delicious. They are well stocked with all my favorite Korean foods and many I have not tried yet. There is a «food bar» stocked with fresh foods (you often can see the ladies working in the back — preparing and cooking). Super friendly and helpful service.
I gave the Price range 2 stars although I wish I could do 2.5. Many of the foods are very reasonably priced. However, many are not. For instance a 22 oz bottle of sesame seed oil is 9.99. That seems pretty steep to me. But, overall it averages out with the other items I purchase. And, if I have to spend an extra dollar or two on my total purchase to help keep this place open that’s okay with me. There is no other quality Korean Market this close to me in Bellevue.

Thank goodness for this place! Seriously! I was really upset after moving to the eastside and not having a Korean grocery around. I am used to having a H-​Mart near by when I want to cook my own Korean food. Then one day, we found this grocery store! My dreams came true! This little family owned grocery store has all the essentials that you need. They even have frozen meats like pork belly and brisket on hand. Not to mention the delicious home made side dishes ready to pack in a container to go!
They are cheap and reliable! I love coming here.

I love this place. As described, I’m a Japanese n Korean food lover. This place ease my Korean food craving in the middle of the day. They have the most delicious kimbap you can get from a grocery store and did I mentioned is only $ 3.99. Even time I stop by i have the urge to get more than one, but my wiggly tummy is telling me «NO, you cant let you workout be a waste!» So i limit myself to just one kimbap whenever i stop by. Lol
just tried the homemade chapchae today, it was okay but a bit too oily. The price and the portion balanced it out so i didnt take away star for that.

I grew up in Federal Way, which means I practically grew up on Korean food because Federal Way is where Koreans spawn from the stone jars that have fermented cabbage in them. I wish I were exaggerating, there was like an H-​Mart in everybody’s backyard. Not that I am complaining. Some of the best Korean restaurants are in Federal Way but I simply can’t justify driving an hour there to have Korean food. This is where Southgate comes in and although it’s a market and not a restaurant, they make some of the best kimchi and kimbap that I have ever had. I never leave this place empty-​handed because everything is such a delight considering the lack of any good Korean places to eat on the Eastside.
For one, their food is made fresh here and not just canned from an unknown factory. They have a spot reserved in the back where the elderly, gung-​ho Korean women are hard at work brining all sorts of vegetables and fish. They have everything you could possibly want as side dishes from your standard cabbage kimchi, cucumbers, green onions, seaweed salad, bean sprouts, fermented squid, pickled lotus, dried anchovies, et cetera. You can either dish it out yourself, where they will charge you by the weight, or they have some pre-​packaged for convenience. This is where the glutton in me really shines.
And because they also love to tease, out in the front where the cashier is they have fresh kimbap, sometimes japchae (sweet potato noodles), pajeon (flour pancakes), and other miscellaneous things that might be a special for the season. Just today I saw that they had dried persimmons and dried red Chinese dates for sale. I’ve never had anything but their kimbap but I can testify that it’s good, better than the ones at Uwajimaya because it hasn’t been refrigerated past its rigor mortis stage.
It’s a relatively compact store but they make use of every single square footage. I am surprised, actually, at how they have utilized the space. They are able to not only have a decent frozen selection of Korean goods, but they have space for baked goods and Korean pastries, their kimchi buffet line, a refrigerated section for their pre-​packaged goods, some produce and fruit, and your average shopping needs (sauces, seasonings, packaged goods, junk food, dried goods, and so forth). It’s no Paldo or whatever but definitely a quality replacement. I could spend hours in this small market.

This is a small family owned Korean grocery store in Bellevue. I think it is the only Korean grocery in the Eastside since Paldo World closed down. I heard H-​Mart is coming next year but will stick with Southgate.
I really like this market. Although it is small, it has most of the Korean foods that I want. It has fresh korean vegetable and fruits. I always get the freshly chopped garlic because I am lazy. Of course it doesn’t have a butcher, but it still has a variety of meat and fish. It has good variety of banchan and their kimchi is pretty good. Kimbab is good too. Great for a healthy lunch.
The service is always friendly. Always helpful. Speak both Korean and English.
If you want to shop Korean food in the Eastside, this market is the place to go.

The Paldo in Bellevue closed recently. And I think it is having a domino effect as a number of businesses in the Lake Hills Shopping Center have closed and/​or in the process of relocating.
Though it was dingy, Paldo was the closest place to my house to find Asian food products. Not to mention Korean banchan. Really hope they redevelop that shopping center and some Asian supermarket (99, H Mart, etc.) opens as a tenant there.
As a result of Paldo’s closure, the closest Korean grocery is Southgate Oriental Grocery in Factoria. It is located in a strip mall across from Factoria Mall next to I Love Phở and two shops away from Boulangerie which is a Korean bakery.
This Korean grocery is much smaller, but seems to offer a good selection of Korean products despite its compactness. The major difference between Paldo and Southgate is that there isn’t a meat and seafood counter. Southgate sells meats, but of the frozen variety.
Produce section here is decently priced for an Asian grocery. As it is a Korean store, there is a good selection of peppers and all that you need to make kim chee. If you want premade kim chee, they sell that too in big containers in the back.
A good portion of the store is devoted to their selection of Korean banchan. The offerings are pretty comparable to the one at Paldo. Fresh back from a trip to Hawaii recently, I was looking for some taegu which is a dried codfish mixed with chili peppers side dish popular there. I couldn’t find any. Wonder if this is only available in Hawaii? Anyways, the closest I could find was dried anchovies so I decided to pass. But I did get some cucumber kim chee ($ 3.99/lb.) which were nice and crisp.
Lastly, I will say the kim bap (aka Korean sushi) here is tasty. I picked up one for about $ 4 which are found next to the pay counter. The kim bap was still warm. I think what makes it work is the seaweed inside the sushi which adds a moisture element to it.
Southgate isn’t an even trade for losing Paldo, but it is nice to have an option nearby to pick up Korean groceries and banchan.

Unlike some people I know who shall remain nameless, I love Korean food. :P
So, when I was told about this little gem of a grocery store, I immediately decided to visit. They have an amazing kimchi selection and homemade Korean sushi and all that… Which is perfect if I ever want to just pick up something fast for a quick meal…
The other day, my sister-​in-​law wanted me to pick up some groceries from here — 3 bunches of green onion for $ 1, and two GIANT daikon for $ 2.20… I came out of the store having spent only $ 3.20! So the prices are great too!
I can’t wait to go here again… It’ll definitely become a staple.