Photo by Karin Elton Ton Kao Asian Grocery Store co-owner Kam Vongkhamchanh waited on a customer recently at her newly-opened store.

MARSHALL — People of Asian descent or people wanting to try new products have a new place to shop in Marshall.

The store, owned by newcomers Kam Vongkhamchanh and Mud Vongkhamchanh, has a wide variety of items for sale — from frozen frog legs to dried Thai chili.

Kam Vongkhamchanh, who is Karen, and her family are in the process of moving to Marshall from Worthington.

The Ton Kao Asian Grocery Store opened March 13. It is located on College Drive across the street from another Asian grocery store. Vongkhamchanh said people can shop at both stores.

“It’s (similar) food, but they might not have something that this store does,” she said.

Kam Vongkhamchanh said her husband, who is Lao, still lives in Worthington, but they plan to be residents of Marshall and their three children will attend Marshall schools in the fall. Her mother is also a part of their family.

They’ve lived in Worthington since 2009. She is happy to live in Marshall, a city she is familiar with because her sister lives in Marshall.

“I think it’s good,” she said. “I like the city. It’s clean.”

She likes having the Avera Marshall Regional Medical Center close by because her mother is 78, “so the hospital is nice.”

She also knows people in the Karen community in Marshall. The Karen (pronounced Ka-REN) are an ethnic group from the border regions of Burma and Thailand, according to mnkaren.org. “They have been subject to persecution and ethnic cleansing by the Burmese government, and many have been living in refugee camps in Thailand for years before being resettled to Minnesota.”

The Karen people and others can find many products for sale at Ton Kao Asian Grocery Store. Behind the counter are items such as aspirin, face cream and perfume. A nearby refrigerator cooler offers Starbucks frappucchino and roasted coconut juice among other beverages. Next to that are shelves of snack items such as Hello BeeBee soft flour cake, Thai coconut roll, rice crackers, wasabi green peas and prawn chips. Large bags of jasmine rice and sticky rice are stacked on the floor.

Shelves lining the walls hold assorted boxes of RasYan herbal clove toothpaste from Thailand, rice cookers from Osaka, Japan, bowls, chopsticks and spoons for rice and soup, and Snake Brand lotion for prickly heat among many other items. Mortars and pestles are available for sale to grind ingredients such as dried Thai chili. Ethnic clothing such as T-shirts with a Karen logo can be found as well.

Toward the back are upright freezers in which frozen squid, mussels, frogs, shrimp, and frog legs can be found. A chest freezer contains bags of snakehead fish, chicken, meatballs, quail and yellow eel.