Banh mi, dim sum and fresh produce still draw customers to Charlotte’s Asian Corner Mall
Customers trickle in to Asian Corner Mall in North Charlotte’s Eastway neighborhood, but they’re not pushing through the famously pothole-filled parking lot for clothing, gifts or housewares. They’re there for the food.
Folks pour in to anchor tenant International Supermarket to pick up fresh fish, nestled in bins on ice, and hard-to-find produce like chayote, Thai eggplant and fuzzy squash.
Hungry customers line up for banh mi at Le’s Sandwiches, where the line at lunchtime often pushes out the door.
On weekends, the expansive dining room at Dragon Court fills with diners, selecting items from dim sum carts, handcrafted by skilled chefs.
None of this will be happening much longer, though. Asian Corner Mall’s tenants — save for Le’s — will be closing at the end of the year. Their leases are up, and the aging property now owned by Beauxwright is set for redevelopment into apartments, office space and fresh retail outlets. Le’s is hanging on just a bit longer, with a plan to move into a new space nearby, owned by the same developers, as soon as construction is finished.
Inside Asian Corner Mall
It’s a time of transition for the business owners who remain and their customers, a tight-knit bunch who consider each other friends. They’re mourning the loss of Asian Corner Mall as they knew it, a hub for Charlotte’s Southeast Asian community where Chinese New Year celebrations once filled the space with dance, food and fellowship.
Nearly all of the storefronts have long since emptied the space that began life as Tryon Mall in the late 1960s and has reinvented itself a few times since. What was once Go Go Gifts is now papered with Happy New Year 2014 calendar pages from an Asian food supplier, and many other stores have gone dark and are covered up, as well. Cigarette butts and abandoned drinks litter the tree-filled planters that line the mall’s hallways.
Besides the restaurants and market, only DTD Services travel agency and NC Nails Academy are holding their ground inside the mall, although a few other businesses remain open outside.
“This was a very central hub for Asian community,” said Dragon Court manager David Thatch, whose father owns the restaurant. “It’s a shame to see it go.”
Dragon Court
Thatch has been working at Dragon Court for 12 years but has grown up in the Chinese restaurant since it opened in January 2000. He remembers a time when Asian Corner Mall was “very fun, very loud, very bright,” with line dances around the mall.
The crowd has dwindled over the years, as the property upkeep hasn’t been “as what it should be,” he said. That’s not the case inside the restaurant, however. Flat-screen TVs hang on the wall, showing World Cup soccer in a dining room filled with newer carpet and gleaming tables, beckoning customers to order Sichuan favorites like salt and pepper squid.
The dining room stays mostly empty on weekdays, but the weekends are another story. The dim sum carts come out and the crowds come in, seeking bites of fried sesame seed dumplings, shu mai and crispy shrimp toast.
His father will be retiring at the end of the year, when Dragon Court’s lease is up and the redevelopment plans kick into gear. “It’s sad to see it go for quite a few bit of people, but I’m pretty sure somewhere down the line, there will be those who try to bring it back again and probably learn from what Asian Corner did right and try to make it better,” Thatch said.
In the meantime, “We’re all here just trying to make it.”
Le’s Sandwiches
At Le’s, customers dart in and out of the family-owned banh mi shop with regularity. In between the rushes, owners Minh Quang Nguyen and Le Thi Le-Nguyen prepare an order for 80 banh mi for an out-of-town customer coming in from Asheville with the help of a cousin working at the counter.
Last year, the Nguyens were talking retirement and considered selling the business they’ve owned since 2004. But their son, Tuan, and his wife, Emily, stepped in.
Now, as their lease at Asian Corner Mall comes to an end, they’ve got plans to move to a nearby location and the elder Nguyens are not retiring just yet. Minh Quang Nguyen said he will miss his friends at Dragon Court and DTD — everybody, really — and is sad to see the International Supermarket go. But he beams as he mentions working three or four days a week with his son, who is busy with his own boys, ages 3 and 6.
“That’s a lot of work for him,” he said.
Nearly all their customers are regulars. John Malpass, who moved to Charlotte about a year and a half ago, said he quickly discovered Le’s Sandwiches and visits almost weekly. He’s tried everything on the menu except the sardine sandwich, but his go-to is the No. 7 cold cut.
“Best banh mi in the city,” Malpass said.
Tuan Nguyen, who previously shared his plans for banh mi shop’s relocation with CharlotteFive, noted at the time that the restaurant had long filled a void in the area.
“My parents built the business for the Asian community. There wasn’t any banh mi or anything like that — my mom started basically the first banh mi shop in Charlotte.”
International Market
Inside International Market, a stream of customers pop in for Asian grocery goods such as vermicelli noodles, tamarind and daikon. Shelves are stocked with oyster sauce, gochujang and chili garlic sauce, and you’ll find dim sum buns and lumpia in the freezer section.
An Asian market with similar goods, New Century, bookends the other side of the mall property. That store will remain open past the end of the year, finding a space in Beauxwright’s plans. But International Market will permanently close its doors.
Manager Frank McKinley has worked there 10 years, though the market has been around since the early 2000s, providing specialty groceries for the Asian community.
He and the market’s owner, Lac Doan, are planning to move to Florida after the first of the year. Retirement has come up, but they’re also considering opening a new market in the Sunshine State. They’re working together on what comes next — and the future is uncertain.
Outside Asian Corner Mall
Change is on the way for the handful of businesses operating outside the mall’s inner walls, as well.
African Market is listed as permanently closed on Google’s pages, but owner Doryen Nimley can be found inside. He said he’s “made some close calls” on finding a new place for the store he took over 12 years ago from an uncle who moved back home to Liberia, but he’s still looking. His time is up at the end of the year, too.
Nimley has stopped paying rent on the place where he sold Afro-Caribbean foods and other products, mostly from West Africa, however. He said the fire marshal shut him down at least twice over the condition of the store, where insulation hangs down from water-damaged ceiling tiles, some of which are still missing.
Nearby at Maxim Nail Mall Supply, owner Lam Pham is preparing for a move to Pineville. He and his brothers have leased a new space for the wholesale salon supply shop they’ve run for a decade, lined with thousands of bottles of nail polish and dip in every color imaginable.
He fondly recalls his customers, who know they’ll soon find Maxim across from Carolina Place Mall, near the as-yet-unopened Super G Mart. “Some of them came as teenagers and now with babies,” Pham said. “Most are like family.”
As he speaks of good memories at Asian Corner Mall, filled with traditional Vietnamese celebrations with people dressing up and bringing food to share, he notes those community gatherings don’t take place anymore. Now, they’re at churches or temples, he said.
“Was crowded — now empty,” he said of the mall.
