Van Produce

Great little produce place! It’s not glamorous by any stretch of the imagination, but the food is fresh and cheap. I just paid $ 13 for the same guacamole fixins that cost me over $ 45 at whole foods. I definitely recommend this place.

You’ve got to love it when you walk into a produce store like Van and look at an item like fresh aloe vera and say to yourself, «What the bleep do I do with this?» Van Produce has all the variety you would hope to find in a China Town produce store from giant grape fruits to aloe vera to tomatillos. Coconut, papaya, sweet potatoes. This place has just about everything you could hope to find at a produce place. But, a lot of people probably drive right by it and never see it. I know that I did for a few years…

Minus one star. The produce quality seems to have taken a hit. I still like the selection here, but there are a few places nearby with a fresher product and cheaper by a few cents per pound. Still if I do not feel like walking too far from the Chinatown part of the I-​District, Van Produce works fine. You just need to pick through the selection to find your treasure.

Cheap produce, the place is next to a restaurant supply store and my parents always go here. The aisles are organized and they also sell non-​produce food under a dollar for teens like me :)

What can I find at Van Produce? Well, how about a bag of produce for $ 10? Does that suit your fancy, pilgrim?

I go to the international district to buy fruit & veg about once a week because it is so affordable and that encourages me to eat healthy food. All the vegetable shops in the International district are cheap, but Van’s is dirt cheap. I can get about three canvas bags of produce (enough for two people to have 5 servings a day for a week) for about $ 20.
At those prices, you do need to check your produce. Near the end of the asian pear season, for example, the ones they had were not very nice. But this was after several months of providing us with lovely asian pears every week. I have also sometimes had some vegetables go off very quickly (for instance some tomatoes which I put in the fridge but which were moldy in just two days) but in general the quality is fine, often better (in the case of the asian pears and strawberries) than what you find in the supermarket. If you take the time to talk to the staff, they will tell you a bit about what you can expect to find in the coming week; I was happy to know about the impending asian pear shortage in advance. I’m deducting one star for the fact that they sometimes still have produce on sale when it is obviously past its prime (like the moldy melons last week); I find it a bit unappealing to see displays like that.
This is not the best shop for other products, such as sauces, rice, and spices. What they have is fine, but if you want variety, you need to go to another shop. Van’s is focused on produce.
They do have parking around the side, as well as on the street. They accept credit cards, debit cards (treated as credit cards), and cash, but no checks. My biggest complaint is that it’s so difficult to get from Capitol Hill to the International district by bus, but that’s really a complaint about Seattle’s bus services, not Van.

Does not one kow of the amazing deals and fresh friuts n veggies available in Little Saigon? I found jitomates and chamote that I had not seen outside of Latin America. The fuji apples are crunchy and capped at $ 0.89 lb I will take a bag of them over a draining trip to QFC anyday. Yeah sure you have to dig through the tomatoes to find the best ones. I survived college on a slim student budget without succumbing to a Ramen noodles and rice diet. Oh and I adore the fresh cilantro bunches (at 3 for $ 1). Peppers range from $ 0.89 to $ 1.59 lb. Overall it seems like Vans has the ‘imperfects’ (read oddly shaped apples) that large grocery stores reject based on appearance, and discounts them by at least half, plus it supports the lovely international district.
It is near the Jackson and 12^th/​Beacon intersection, right before the fish overpass poles.