Green Onion

Store Review:
Somehow I’ve been in Champaign for over a year and this is the first Asian supermarket I visited. I think it’s because my wife does all the grocery shopping. We came here looking for Asian desserts after our dinner and were not disappointed. I believe this stores run by Koreans as they carry a variety of Korean foods including bulgogi and kimchee. The first I notice about the stores how clean it is in well lit. Produce include lots of prepackaged Asian goods such as ramen, Curry, hot pot meats, and a very limited selection of fresh produce. The only downside is that the prices are incredibly high. I’ll have to compare this store ones I visit other Asian supermarkets.
Pros– Very clean, lots of specialty Asian foods
Cons– Hard to turn into parking lot, very high prices, Limited produce
Hidden deals– Check out signs for sales items throughout the store.

The best asian grocery store I’ve found since moving to Champaign. Is clean, has good prices, and boasts an impressive selection of the stuff I want.
Lots of Japanese and Korean as far as selection goes, which is good because I mainly prepare Japanese food at my house and Am-ko’s selection was a little less than what I was used to coming from Chicago and it’s slew of amazingly impressive stores. Green Onion carried several items that I’d been unable to find at the other CU asian stores.
COULD use a better selection of produce, but what they did have was very high quality.

Yes! Finally a place with well made daifuku! They carry a brand that has many 5 ingredients and no artificial colors I have to watch for. Absolutely love that! They also carry a nice selection of home made kimchi. Kkakdugi is one of my favorites so I’ll have to check and see if they have any next time I’m in. My only complaint is that they’re on the opposite side of town from where I live so it’s a bit difficult to get over there unless I’m collecting special ingredients for a meal.

Dear monica p.
I am sorry to hear that. However I am not agree with you because I received donations for school in urbana elementary school from the green onion last two years. I guess they are out of budget or something.

Dear Green Onion,
Oh how I wished things could change! I come by your store on a weekly basis and spend about roughly $ 50 per week. You’ve always been happy and nice to me then.
And then, you broke my heart when you made up some excuse to not support a school, that’s just really disappointing! Especially when your business is supported by students, families and friends of the university and other locals.
Oh it’s so sad… but I think that we will start supporting other business that are willing to support local organizations. So sad that someone that resides in the Champaign community wouldn’t help the very people that shop there.
Farewell! Adieu! Adiós! Zaijien! annyeonghi gaseyo! We’ll take our money and spend it elsewhere!

If you are preparing a hot pot event, then here’s a convenient place for the thin-​sliced meat. I commend them for differentiating hot-​pot lamb/​beef/​pork from shabu shabu lamb/​beef/​pork although i really don’t think there’s difference there in the meat itself.
The butane burner and butane gas served their functions well. The pot has a funny name printed in Chinese, Chrysanthemum Pot, no idea where this comes from but heated up fast and no weird taste or smell.

This place is organized and clean. They have mainly Korean items but Japanese and Chinese items as well. Great selection of produce and frozen items, super fresh and with good prices. They also have fesh pre-​made items you can take for lunch or a snack such as seaweed salad or kimchi, and a nice meat case with hard to find items such as pork/​beef for shabu shabu and saba. Big selection of frozen Asian desserts and household items such as chopsticks and tools for making kimchi.

I don’t really like the prices at Green Onion. It’s definitely a nicer grocery store, but the prices are way too high. There are many other Asian grocery stores in Champaign that have the same products but for cheaper.

There’s a huge variety of items here I haven’t seen since I was still running around in diapers!
Overall, I would say the smallest Asian grocery store around Champaign, but because it’s the newest, it’s also the nicest/​cleanest of the lot.
They have a whole wall full of kitchen appliances, all the little snacks and candies you would typically find in a tradtional Asian grocery store, and they even have the million different varieties of drinks, those fun jell-​o shots that I thought were illegal…, and lots of fresh produce.
Overall, I would choose to shop here over the other Asian grocery markets for its cleanliness, but may have to make another trip to Am-​Ko or Far East as Green Onion doesn’t always carry what I’m looking for.

A pretty good Korean/​Chinese/​Japanese grocery. In some areas their selection is better than the competition, in other areas worse. I think what distinguishes them from the rest is that its particularly bright, clean, and neatly organized.

I was a little disappointed in Green Onion. I went in for the first time to try to get some lemon grass for a soup I was making, but when I got there I realized I didn’t know what lemon grass looked like. That would have been ok, except that all the produce was either unlabeled or not labeled in English, and also shrink wrapped (preventing me from smelling any of it to help me figure out what it was.) I ended up guessing («what looks the most like grass?») and when I got out to my car and ripped the shrink wrap off to smell my purchase immediately discerned that I had Bok Choi and not lemon grass. I hate Bok Choi!
They did have a better selection of rice wine (sake and korean varieties) than anywhere else in town, and about 20 kinds of mochi (I love mochi!) I’m sure it’s really hard to get actual asian produce to champaign, so I guess in retrospect I shouldn’t be surprised that most of their inventory was varieties of asian noodles and dry grains.
I can see why, if I were an Asian student, I would like to come to Green Onion to get my brand of noodle bowl that I can’t get anywhere else. However, as the gringo aspiring chef that I am, I am sad to report that this isn’t the place for me to get the sauces and spices I need for my asian cooking as I hoped it would be. On the bright side, my trip did make me realize that Schnuck’s actually has an acceptable variety of the ingredients that I usually need (e.g., fish sauce, vegetable oil, chili sauce.)