I’m here to convince you to shop at your local ethnic grocery stores.

I live in Philadelphia. The map above of where people of different ethnicities live in Philadelphia has red dots for whites, blue dots for blacks, and yellow dots for Hispanics. In the middle of the map, there’s a place in North Philadelphia where the north-south swath of Hispanic neighborhoods tapers down to a point and mixes with the black and white neighborhoods to the west and east. And right there, there’s a locally-owned grocery store called Cousin’s. Not surprisingly, it’s a fantastic place to shop for food.

It’s made even better by the fact that there’s a fairly strong Muslim community in North Philadelphia. So: Take a full service American supermarket, add two big aisles of Mexican/Spanish produce, meats and groceries (including all manner of hot peppers, salsas, queso fresco, chorizos, octopus, salt cod, all of those different kinds of beans and cornmeal, etc.), and then add a halal meat counter, Lebanese yogurt, and a whole aisle of Middle Eastern specialties (halva, tahini, sardines in spicy oil, etc.). It’s a dream to shop there. The prices are rock bottom, the selection is amazing, and the food quality is equal to or higher than any other major, regular-priced supermarket I’ve tried.

It’s become my favorite place to grocery shop, but I’ve had a tough time convincing any of my friends to give it a shot.

There are tremendous benefits to shopping at your local ethnic grocery store, even if only occasionally. You’ll definitely save money. A lot of money! The difference is really dramatic. At Cousin’s, most everything feels like it’s priced at 20 to 50 percent less than mass-market competitors. Five pounds of fresh chicken legs for $3; 18 large eggs for $2; a pound of unsalted butter for $2. And the prices are similarly low at my local Chinese market, where I sometimes shop for greens, pork, fish and Asian goods like sushi rice and coconut milk. Make no mistake: Shopping at an ethnic grocery will make a big difference in your monthly budget, enough so that it’s worth trying just for the savings.

You’ll also discover new foods, and new combinations of foods (the combination of Sriracha sauce with, well, just about everything is a good example). Those foods will typically be high quality and not over-processed (so, generally healthier!), because that’s what immigrant populations demand and expect. As economist Tyler Cowen noted in his article on shopping exclusively at his local Chinese grocery for a month:

When it comes to ethnic markets, most of the shoppers are well informed. They come from cultures where food preparation receives more attention than in the United States. They’re also largely immigrants or children of immigrants. Either they hail from cultures where most food prices are lower than they are here or the immigrants have lower incomes themselves, or both.

You’ll get outside of your usual loop and meet different people. And you’ll actually be shopping locally, with the money staying in your neighborhood or city, which probably isn’t the case with Trader Joe’s, headquartered in California (and owned by Germans), or Whole Foods, based in Texas.

So, why don’t people like me and my friends usually shop at ethnic groceries? The reasons I often hear are crime, selection, presentation and feeling like an outsider, whether due to language or ethnicity.

Crime? Well, if people are getting carjacked in the parking lot of your local ethnic grocery, don’t go there. But typically, grocery stores are built in fairly stable neighborhoods near large residential populations. I was surprised to find that there’s actually the same amount or maybe even more crime in my mostly white neighborhood as there is near Cousin’s. If this is a real concern for you, just go on the Internet and look up the statistics—you might be surprised.

In terms of selection, well, it’s true—your local ethnic grocery won’t have everything you’re used to, and that’s part of the point. As Cowen points outs:

The Safeway or Wegmans or corner market supplies a lot of convenient food… but that very convenience can make the local supermarket a rut. The deadening hand of routine takes over our shopping lives: We know what we want, where to find it, when to get it, and what to do with it. These habits can be the biggest obstacles to discovering new regions of the food universe.

The foods you miss from your American supermarket probably weren’t that good for you anyway, and being exposed to the new options at your ethnic grocery is bound to enhance your cooking and dining.

Presentation is one of the key differences between American and ethnic groceries. The wide aisles, gentle Muzak and carefully crafted shopping experiences at conventional supermarkets may make you feel comfortable, but you’re paying for it in the higher costs of your food, and in many cases those store design elements are pushing you towards more expensive, less healthy foods. At the very least, keeping you comfortable may well be keeping you in your routine, so you’ll keep shopping wherever you’re shopping. As with selection, breaking out of your rut and shopping in a place where it’s not immediately clear where to find your favorite foods can have great benefits on the variety of foods you cook and eat.

Addressing people’s discomfort at being in store where the main language isn’t English, or where almost everyone is of a different ethnicity, is complicated. But let me just say: Try not to let your comfort zones get in the way of your dinner, or the health of your pocketbook. Race relations in America are obviously complex, but being willing to stand in line at the supermarket with people who don’t look like you is a good start for everyone involved. And you can be sure that the owners of the supermarkets are glad to have more people shopping in their stores. Back when “urban food deserts” were a hot topic, a local TV station showed up at Cousin’s when I was shopping there to see just what scarce morsels of food might be found in the barren expanses of North Philadelphia. The store managers, who are of Middle Eastern descent, were dashing around the store in front of the cameras waving pineapples, fresh-baked pita, poblano peppers and giant avocados.

There are such great benefits to shopping at ethnic groceries, and the downsides almost entirely evaporate upon closer inspection. I’m not suggesting that you follow Tyler Cowen and shop exclusively at an ethnic grocery—just try to incorporate it into your routine occasionally. After all, for almost anyone who’s interested in both good food and not spending too much on groceries, it’s impossible to get everything you need at one store. Shopping at an ethnic grocery once a week, or even once a month, is bound to benefit your wallet, your taste buds, and maybe even your city and the people who live in it.

Stefan Zajic lives in Philadelphia and thinks about science all day. Map Credit: Eric Fischer

South Circular Road, Dublin, Ireland; August 1999-June 2000; My share: 375 Euros/month
When the cab driver dropped me off at my new home, he warned me about the neighborhood. “Oh, no, love, you don’t want to live here,” he said. “It’s not safe.” He pointed down the road to Dolphin’s Barn, rough and drug-ridden. I was 20, nervous, and excited. I asked if he thought I’d be okay. “Oh, love, I’d move if I were you,” he replied. I’m glad I didn’t. I shared the narrow house for 11 months with an Italian guy named Corrado who played the organ at the church down the street, and got perfumed love letters from a girl in Hungary; a German heartthrob named Jens who is the only person I know who looked good in leather pants, and two French guys, Christian, a broody smoker of Gauloises who gave up on trying to learn English, and Benj, fussy and rigid, who made a cleaning schedule for all of us to maintain, and cooked cassoulets that bubbled in the pot for hours. We had family dinners once a week. At the first one, all of us strangers, we talked about the stereotypes of each housemate’s home country. What they say about leaving a place in order to know it turns out to be true.

Baltimore Ave, Philadelphia, Pa.; September 2000-May 2001; My share: $600/month
I shared this off-campus row house with six others during my senior year of college, including the Irish boyfriend I brought back to the U.S. with me. It was a good block to live in, and was away from the buttoned-up soon-to-be investment bankers that dominated the college where I went and mostly hated. I logged a lot of hours on the stoop. Late in the spring, closing in on graduating, I sat on the stoop with a housemate in the early mornings, and watched the Amoroso’s bread trucks drive by as they made their roll deliveries for all the steak and cheese subs in the city. We went to bed those mornings when the light shifted to gray.

Memorial Drive, Cambridge, Mass.; November 2001-June 2002 $0/month
After graduating, I lived at my grandmother’s sixth floor apartment in Cambridge. It looked over the Charles River, which curved below her balcony and the Boston skyline some miles away. There was a garbage chute. It was not a comfortable time (I was dumb, young and looking for jobs), nor was it a comfortable place to live in—in the sense of being surrounded by objects that were not my own. There were rules. The beds, for example, were not for lovemaking.

Sunset Street, Mission Hill, Boston, Mass.; June 2002-August 2002; My share: $525/month
The summer I started working, I sublet a room in Mission Hill with a couple whose names I don’t remember and a music theorist named Kyle who came from the South and was gentle and strange and drank for three days straight, while pacing in his room, talking to himself, listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Eric Satie. We watched The Seventh Seal together and, on moving out, he handed me a letter which was filled with kindness and concern, and made me grateful. I came home from work and drank tea, sweating in my bedroom while the sun went down behind the buildings.

Hillside Street, Mission Hill, Boston, Mass.; September 2002-December 2003; My share: $325/month
It started out as a post-college dream: A big, old beautiful house with a swing on the front porch, and flowers and vines that spread and wrapped. A huge kitchen, a dishwasher!, a back porch, a living room with huge windows, long drapes, a sweeping staircase. A friend of a friend lived there, he and five others, seven of us all told. I had the smallest room, tiny, with a dormer window. Some of the original roommates moved out, new ones arrived, dynamics changed. Things soured when I found out that one of the housemates, a grad student at the Harvard School of Public Health, had been taping sexual encounters with unknowing women and holding screenings for the rest of the guys in the house.

Memorial Drive, Cambridge, Mass.; January 2004-March 2004 $0/month
I was back at my grandmother’s for a stretch of strange months after fleeing Mission Hill. I don’t remember when the front door of the building was locked, and you had to be let in by the doorperson, but I do remember coming home often, late, and drunk, and standing in front of the sliding door, knocking to wake up the doorman, who was asleep in his chair at the desk.

Amory Street, Cambridge, Mass.; April 2004-September 2008; My share: $700/month
I moved in with my greatest friend Jenny. The two-bedroom place just outside Inman Square was on the first floor of a typical Boston triple decker. The rhinoceros of a landlady lived with her cowering husband on the third floor, and her screaming tirades could be heard even in the winter with the windows closed. Jenny and I laughed a lot of the time, had short, spontaneous dance parties which were a specific joy, and went out together every Monday night. I sat on the toilet while Jenny showered, and vice-versa, and we’d chat about our days in the steam. We called it a Boston marriage and made a pact that some day, if we end up widowed, we will share a home again which will involve secret underground tunnels.

Eldridge Street, Lower East Side, Manhattan, N.Y.; October 2008-January 2009; My share: $900/month
My young brother Sam, a senior in college, had a vacant room in his apartment. I rented it out for some winter months, desperate and scared, with a mattress on the floor, having quit my job of seven years, and having no idea what was next. His other roommate, a high-end cocktail waitress, came clomping home in high-heeled boots at five or six in the morning, and I loathed her the only way you can when someone wakes you up again and again in a time when sleep does not come easy.

Pembroke Street, Somerville, Mass.; April 2009-June 2010 $1,150/month
This was on the third floor of a crumbling old Victorian with slanting ceilings and good breezes. I loved this apartment, and had it all to myself. A professional jazz pianist from France lived below me—the music trickled up the stairs, and it was a pleasure to hear him practice. I ran into him on the porch one afternoon. His wife had had a baby just days before, and he looked tired. I told him congratulations, and asked how it was going. He shook his head and said, “It is difficult. The baby, it looks like a rodent.”

Putnam Avenue, Cambridge, Mass.; June 2010-now; My share: $625
I share this small one-bedroom with my partner Jonah in Cambridgeport, near the river, near Central Square and all the ne’er-do-wells, near Harvard Square, and just across the BU Bridge from Fenway Park. We cook meals, and talk about moving, but it’s hard to leave: There are parks and good neighbors, and we can walk most places that we need and like. Our rent is low for this part of town, and we can’t afford to live in a bigger place around here. It feels like the first home of any real permanence of my grown-up life, a small place with plumbing troubles and bright walls and good smells. There is the sense, already, that once we do leave, this place will be looked back on as favorite and best.

Nina MacLaughlin lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She’s working on a book about leaving journalism to be a carpenter to be published by W.W. Norton.