Kodiak’s Asian food gourmets have a new place to shop. The Thai Market under the Subway restaurant downtown, opened May 4, offers noodles, spices and bags and bags of rice.

Owner Savannah Morkahantha said she worked for an Asian market in California when she was 13. Working at the market, she realized, “I want to do this on my own.” And now she owns and, with help from her sister, operates her own market.

So far the market’s most popular products have been phone cards, hot Thai sauce and tom yum sauce.

The store offers many things, said Morkahantha, not available at traditional supermarkets such as low-cost phone cards with good rates to Asia and fresh noodle sticks. There are rice cookers, steamer pots and children’s candy.

And if a customer comes in wanting an exotic Asian product the store does not stock, she said, “We could try to get it for them.”

Morkahantha stocks products she buys from dealers in California, Chicago and Seattle who import from Asia.

She says business is slow so far but probably just because word hasn’t gotten around. Being beneath the Subway, “It’s really hard for customers to see that we’re in here”

Indeed, the only way to tell there is an Asian grocer in the building is the yellow and red sign outside that reads “Thai Market” with an arrow pointing downstairs.

In October, she said, she plans to expand the store to include a gift section offering purses, hats, incense, and statues of Buddha.

For now, though, she’s selling Asian foods, from the mundane — Instant Lunch noodle cups, to the exotic — shrimp-flavored crackers.

Mirror writer Andrew Wellner can be reached via e-mail at awellner@kodiakdaily mirror.com.