An Unexpected World Tour

We dropped the car at the dealer at about 10 am in the heart of Renton’s auto row. We hadn’t arranged for alternative transportation — we didn’t know how long it would take but there was no place we had to be. I’d checked the map earlier to find a place for coffee — we walked three blocks, crossing six lane arterials, passing the Honda dealer and the Saturn dealer and the Cadillac dealer to a tiny place called Espresso Daviso. The woman in front of us in line wished us a “blessed day” as she headed back with her tall whatever and her iced something else. We ordered coffee and when the barrista asked what we were up to, in that casual “Hey, what’s going on?” way that some good barristas have, we told him. “You’re the only thing around we could find to walk to.”

“You know, two blocks that way,” — he pointed north — “there’s the DK Market. It’s, uh, funky. It’s got all this Russian stuff and there are piroshkis and bread and all kinds of things. It’s not your regular market. It’s kind of, um, well, it’s funky.”

Of course we went. We walked in, hesitant, through the under construction entry way, past the sign that said “pinatas available in Jimenez Market”, past the product shots of fry-it-at-home Indian bread, past the signs for eyebrow threading and what turned out to be a Chinese herbalist. My jaw dropped. We were in a warehouse of imported food from everywhere. There were stacks of Indian pilaf mixes, piles of rice bags , cans of mystery fruits and vegetables. There were pastes and pickles and pates. There were transparent cans of fruit soda and boxes of tea and tins of cookies. A Pakistani man explained the panadus rosewater syrup to me — “You mix it with water, you make a kind of lemonade with it, but she…” — he indicated his little girl who was giggling over her reflection in my cell phone — “she likes to drink it in milk.” I snapped the girl’s picture and then, showed it to her on the phone. She giggled with delight. “Say thank you!” said her dad.

Solemn Soviets pushed carts around. Two women who looked to be from — oh, let’s say Turkmenistan or Soviet Georgia — scrutinized the produce. Over  in the canned goods, two young Vietnamese girls discussed something kind of processed fruit. I picked things up and put them down again. Paper think Dutch wafers, Russian tea, Turkish candy, Greek grape leaves. There were bundles of lemon grass and a fridge case with paneer and some kind of biscuits stuffed with Saudi dates. We’d walk past a palette of goods and the globe would spin, depositing us in Belgium for some preserved fruit and then, in Lebanon for tahina sauce. Sometimes a plastic package would be torn open, salted dried something or other, and then, piles of dried noodles. The butcher case held sausages and other mystery meats, the little drawers behind the herbalist’s counter were labeled in Chinese. At the checkout stand — we bought a loaf of Russian rye, a big jar of cinnamon, and some bulgar for tabouleh –  I tossed a Kinder Bueno — a Mexican labeled German candy bar — into the basked. “For the barrista,” I told J, we have to go back and say thank you!”

Back in the coffee shop, the barrista lit up with delight. “You know, we bought a can of some kind of processed fish there. Just to see what was inside. We opened it up and there were teeth! They were just sort of looking at us, these fish teeth… I’m glad you liked it! Thanks for the candy bar!” We walked the three long blocks back past the shiny car lots. In the dealership waiting room, a man sat in a faux leather chair watching CNN while drinking coffee from a Styrofoam cup.

DK Market is 720 Lind Avenue Southwest in Renton, Washington, just a few blocks off Auto Row.