A Chinese family has opened a new Asian grocery on Berry Street, right where the old Printer Wizards shop used to be.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Jojo Zhang opened the Wojia Asian Grocery in order to bring back the flavours of home, with ingredients shipped over from mainland China and Korea.
"My friends all love Wagga, but they can't eat home food. Very sad. But now I open the shop, they feel very good," Mrs Zhang said.
"We came to Wagga five years ago, very happy here. We wanted to settle down here, but we sometimes very miss our homeland food."
In other news
The mother-of-two said many of her homesick friends would travel all the way to Sydney and Melbourne in order to buy exotic ingredients which could not be found anywhere outside the major cities.
Mrs Zhang said it used to be impossible to recreate some of the dishes she fondly remembers from her childhood, having grown up in the Chinese province of Shandong.
She is particularly fond of Chinese hotpot, a social dish enjoyed by groups of friends and families over the cold winter months.
Hotpot is a highly customisable dish with different recipes from province to province, and now Mrs Zhang stocks many of those ingredients in her new shop.
"We hope the people who live here, the Asians, can have the home feel. Just like home," Mrs Zhang said.
"We all love Wagga."