Sun Kau Shing Company

Sun Kau Shing is one of two large stores on the block that sells all your Chinese/​Asian foodstuffs. The outside of the store has a huge display of cookies, candies, beverages, dried noodles, and more. In the store, there are aisles of snacks, sweets, cookies, condiments, spices, sauces, can goods, teas, countless dried foodstuffs and various frozen items.
I usually get my 50 lb sack of rice from here. But on my last visit, they had a sale on Lee Kum Kee premium oyster sauce for $ 3.29 for the 18 oz bottle. Couldn’t help in grabbing several bottles at this great price.
Overall, a good one-​stop shop for all your Asian snacks, condiments and foodstuffs. As with many stores in Chinatown, the aisles are narrow and can be impassable if the store is crowded.

Great place for finding many of your Chinese and South East Asian culinary needs, from curry paste, Thai fish sauce, roti, Chinese sausage, fresh noodle, a gazillion varieties of instant noodle, etc.. .

I don’t know why this place has such low reviews, as it has *everything* I want… and I want a wide variety of Asian foods, at a low, low price for S.F., that often rivals the big stores like 99 Ranch.
Even though it focuses on Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai, it also had Japanese foods at a price that is much better than what I find in Japantown. I got my short grain rice, a big, inexpensive container of Kikoman Low Sodium Soy Sauce, nori, rice crackers, wasabi, soba noodles… but also got Otasty potstickers, Madras curry, coconut milk, and my favorite vegetarian tom kha stock, and a big bag of untoasted sesame seeds. (I toast my own. They’re much better and fresher that way.) Seriously worth a trip to.

Sun Kau Shing has wall of cookies stocked in it’s storefront. a drawback to the cookies is the palm oil used.
inside is all kinds of bulk candies (mostly chinese) with the usual chinese groceries. everything is reasonably priced.
used to buy candies here. not recently since i no longer have a sweet tooth.

Whenever I’m in Chinatown, I always make s quick stop here for some Chinese staples and tea of which they carry many different brands of. They also sell candy by the pound and when I was little, I always found myself grabbing a few prices on the go.
Facing some stiff competition from other vendors similar to this location around Chinatown, I’m always comparing prices and seeing which store has it cheaper. This store can sometimes be cheaper than other stores which is why it’s always worth comparing prices.

This place is a bit messy and cramped, as many of the Asian marts in Chinatown or the Inner Richmond are.
What’s awesome about this place is that, while I was craving WONG LO KAT (Wanglaoji) at the latter end of my first trimester. we walked into this store and spotted it right away! They sell them for around $ 1 a can here, though you can get a discount if you buy a whole box.
Also, they sell Kopiko, a popular Indonesian coffee candy that my husband loves.

It seems the store Pang Kee gets the most attention for being a place to buy Chinese groceries for cheap with good selection. This place is actually just as good. I was able to find certain items I like, namely brands of instant coffee from Asia, that the other store doesn’t have. Certain items were cheaper also (but then, the vice versa also applies). This place also seems a bit larger and the aisles a bit easier to navigage (albeit just marginally) than Pang Kee. Therefore, if I come to Chinatown I’ll have to be sure to visit both stores.

I’m not surprised Vicki Y above had the experience that she did.
Last night when my wife and I were shopping there, we had the final straw and will never go back (even though for years, we had been good, loyal and often tolerant customers there.)
In the back corner there is a stack of gallon size plastic jugs of peanut oil which my wife asked me to take one of. The stack was about five feet high, about six jugs to a stack and interleaved flimsily by loose pieces of randomly shaped and old plywood. I took the front jug on the top stack and before I knew it, that top level became unbalanced and toppled to the floor, one of which landed squarely on my right foot first. I have a high threshhold for pain and struggled to contain myself as I saw stars. After recovering from the shock, I picked up the plywood and the jugs and carefully put the jugs back up in deference to the store’s probable intent.
As we were about to go to the cashier to pay for numerous items we had gathered, the woman behind the cash register screamed something out and suddenly a man appeared holding a jug of the same peanut oil. Showing me the cracked plastic cap, he asked me to pay for it!
I told them there’s no way I would pay for it, that in fact I was injured by them and that they obviously don’t want our business. We dropped everything on the spot and left the store. We will never return, of course. (Not as a customer anyway., dpending on the outcome of my injury.)
This morning we talked about it again and I said, «Oh my god! Can you imagine their liability if it was a little toddler or an elderly person who was struck by a one-​gallon jug dropped from five feet?
There are plenty of stores in chinatown that have treated us much better. This store offers nothing that we can’t find anywhere else, except for the rudeness and unsafe conditions.

I was visiting my brother in SF and I wanted to pick up some snacks for the day. I go into this place since it’s real close to his place and boy did I make the wrong choice. I should have walked out the second I went inside, but I was in a hurry.
Overall, this place was grungy, but most Asian markets I’ve been in do have some layer of dirt on everything and everyone in the store.
I know space is limited in SF, but the aisles in this store were tiny with a lot of the product hanging out into the little aisle there was not to mention all the product out on the sidewalk. In my opinion, that’s pretty tacky.
The cashier I got didn’t know how to count/​make change. A quarter, nickle and penny does not 42 cents make. I don’t know if she was trying to short me 11 cents or sincerely thought she gave me 42 cents.
Even if you’re in a hurry, this place isn’t worth the hassle.

I think I’ve died and gone to snack heaven.
I always suspected this was a great store. Just looking at it from the outside told me so. Crackers, cookies and jellies bursting through the seams of the storefront and sitting on stands outside, their colorful packaging calling out to hungry passersby.
I finally went inside just a few days ago and all I could do for the first 5 minutes was wander up and down the aisles with my mouth agape. What started as an errand to pick up tea turned into a full-​blown cookiepalooza, and I don’t even have a sweet tooth. That’s how enticing this store is. The sheer volume of packaged goodies and condiments boggles the mind.
How DO they fit all that stuff in there? The ultra-​slim aisles help. At times I had to scoot my big ass through sideways. Forget about passing someone… it’s like an old highway where the person closest to the last turnout has to back up.
My jasmine tea? A box of 100 bags for $ 2.49. That’s 2 ½ cents per bag. Beat THAT, Safeway!

piggy accidentally wandered into a choice scene from the theatre of the absurd today! let hers be a cautionary tale for all who contemplate food purchases here!
at first, the day was going quite normally. piggy was feeling extra productive as she checked items off her errands list with unprecedented speed, and attractive check marks as well! (^(oo)^)
now it might be because piggies have been spoiled be the vast spaciousness of behemoth asian supermarkets in the suburbs, but inventory management here has always been fairly wanting. Usually, they don’t even bother to remove items from their cardboard trays; they just stick the whole tray onto the shelf instead. no big deal, until piggy points out that the cardboard trays are all a good deal longer than the shelf is deep. i’d given up on retrieving anything from the lower shelves a couple of years ago!
despite their limited inventory selection, turnover must not be that great either, as everything seems perpetually covered by a fine layer of grime, with the only exception being the wall racks of random asian cigarette brands, which actually appear to do quite a brisk business…
the layout is also an operations manager’s nightmare; one cashier is right smack in the front center, which means if anyone is at that stand, you have to walk all the way to the back of the store just to get to the other side, as they’ve put one of those giant open-​container freezers running right up along the entire length of the store.
before today, i probably would have allocated a 2-​star or 3-​star w/​caveats type of rating. no more! huffed the piggy, who hasn’t been this perturbed in some time.
as per my usual, i popped into this little market to stock up on some of my favourite asian foods. found what i wanted, got into line, and was poised to check off yet another to-​do with a flourish as the cashier rang me up (^(oo)^)v
.. .. and thus began the Theatre of the Absurd, with unhappy guest cameo by a little piggy (/(oo)\)‘ after i handed over the money, i’d started daydreaming randomly. .. i wasn’t due any change, so i was a little confused when she put a $ 5 bill in front of me. .…
**insert confused little piggy look here**
at which point she asked me if i had any other money.
huh? the little piggy stared back, uncomprehending (‘ (oo) ’)
…
at which point she told me that i couldn’t use the bill i’d given her because one of the corners had torn off
…
at which point this little piggy was exercising herculean effort to maintain self control. upon piggy’s request to elaborate on her refusal to accept the offensive bill, what was her ironclad rationale? «i can’t see the number»
oh! well then! excuse me! i should have realized they’d come out with a new type of money now where the denomination is only marked in one corner, and the markings in the other 3 corners are just clever decoys to trick unsuspecting piggies! how foolish of me to fall for that one!
and then, the absurdity continued as she actually started UNPACKING MY FOOD OUT OF THE BAG, as if she were certain i wasn’t going to be able to dig out another 5 bucks to pay her with!
it would be funny, if it weren’t so absolutely absurd.
never again, said the little piggy. i’ll take my business elsewhere, and you should too, before you get treated like a suspect because the ridges around the edge of your quarter have worn unevenly. hmph.

This is our go to place. Why? It’s the closest Asian grocery store and they carry everything we want/​need at the best price so why walk blocks and lug anything when we don’t have to? Size is similar to Pang Kee — 2 store fronts combined into one with lots of stock displayed out on sidewalk. Here, you can also find some frozen items in bulk like fish balls and such right at the entrance.
We love the spicy anchovy snack they sell here, it’s great for cold beer or if you have the munchies. They also have the Japanese seaweed salad here, available at the middle register.
The only thing I don’t care for is the cat. Luckily for me, it doesn’t run around but mostly just nap on top of some boxes near the far end corner.