Much as I love, and usually prefer, teeny little gourmet grocery shops and ethnic grocery shops and cafe/delis and specialty shops, I have a lot of appreciation and affection for good supermarkets. (I also have a lot of loathing for awful supermarkets and these seem to be the norm, unfortunately.)
My local grocery store is pretty good. It's constantly winning grocer awards. I used to be quite enamoured of it, but maybe just because I'm so used to it, the charm has worn off. Now I am more likely to complain that the bread and milk are too expensive than to marvel at the selection of gourmet oils or get excited that they sell Wildfire bread and free-range chicken parts. They also recently enraged me by putting a new policy into effect where you're not allowed to take unbought groceries outside where they have a lot of produce and flowers on display. You're supposedly expected to leave your cart of groceries inside, grab a basket, shop outside, then transfer your outside groceries into your inside cart. This is absolutely ridiculous and I refuse to do it. So far, no one has harrassed me about it but if they ever do, I might just have to stop shopping there. I hope this doesn't happen because it's damn convenient to be able to walk for three minutes and get most of what I need to feed the family.
I still have a lot of love for Thrifty Foods, the top grocery chain on the island. Top points to them for a good cheese selection in most locations, carts that don't require you to have a quarter or a loonie to use them, and an abundance of carts with infant seats. They lose points for having a poor selection of free-range and organics meats. Good fish counter, though, and nice produce.
Probably my most exciting supermarket experience to date has been the Zehrs in Barrie, Ontario. Zehrs is the southwest Ontario equivalent of Thrifty's, but of course, since it's in sw ontario, it's on a much bigger scale. The one in Barrie is definitely one of the better locations, and also it was the first one I ever went to so I was agog. It was the first time I'd seen an olive bar, I think. For the 16 months we lived in Waterloo, we lived right around the corner from another nice Zehrs, and I went there almost daily. Tobias describes Zehrs as a cross between an upscale gourmet shop and Costco. What could be better than that? Of course, Zehrs has an unfair advantage over any BC supermarket because it's legal to sell wine in supermarkets in Ontario, and it isn't here.
This was part of what made the supermarkets in Europe great too: you could pick up a great (and cheap!) Bordeaux or a couple of Belgian beers just an aisle over from where you grabbed your sliced loaf and jam.
A year ago this week, I was as thrilled to explore Sainsbury's for the first time as Sahsez was to visit Legoland. In the Adrian Mole books, (which I've read at least 5 times each) Adrian's family shops at Sainsbury's and I'd always wanted to know what it was like. I'd also read about it online and was dying to shop there. For me I think it was about a general anglo-fascination that would be fed by living like an English person: shopping at Sainsbury's and calling my dinner "tea".
When I finally got there, I could have spent hours examining every little "dinner in a bag" and weird British condiment. Unfortunately, the actual taste of the Sainsbury's prepared foods was pretty much the same as all prepared foods I've tried: lacklustre. But I still like their produce selection, and the general atmosphere of the shops. My large reusable Sainsbury's bag is my favourite souvenir from that vacation.
When I lived in Dublin in '96, I loved shopping at Superquinn, despite their only carrying one shape of pasta. This was before I was big into cooking though, so I suspect it was just the novelty of being on my own (living away from my parents for the first time) that made shopping there so exciting.
Albert Heijn was something I'd never heard of before we got to the Netherlands, but I quickly fell in love, especially with the Museumplein location in Amsterdam, which had a cool sloping roof that Sahsez loved to climb on. Typically European things that make Albert Heijn wonderful: everybody using reusable shopping bags, lots of fresh bread, amazing yogourt and beer selections. Especially Dutch things that make Albert Heijn wonderful: wide range of goudas and smoked fish and everybody toting their shopping home on their bikes. Only complaint: resuable grocery bags not nearly as attractive as the Sainsbury's ones.
When I spent five weeks in the Dordogne in '02, my roommate Amelie did most of the grocery shopping, but I did make a couple of very rewarding trips to an Intermarche outside of Montignac, where I revelled in 1-liter-sized Coke (which I bought just for the novelty of the strange size of the bottle), frozen pizza with cabecou, my most favourite cheese in the world, cheap foie gras, and a butcher who, we later found out, thinks it is perfectly reasonable to pack up the head of the rabbit you want butchered and wrapped, along with the rest of the body parts. (I think Amelie turned vegetarian the day I mistakenly cooked and served her the head, complete with teeth. What can I say? I didn't careful examine each frozen piece, just bunged it in the pot and cooked it up!)
It'll be a long time before I visit New York again (went with my dad and sister ten years ago for a week) but I felt like I was there when I read Ayun Halliday's recent post about a cool new supermarket in Brooklyn. Nice to know I'm not alone in having a thing for good supermarkets. I wish our local chain of Fairway Markets was like the New York ones. Alas, no. (But they do have a truly wonderful selection of Asian imports).
For years I have been hearing about Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, but have never been inside either. I won't say that visiting these places is what most excites me about our upcoming southwest US tour, but it's up there! Godiva's propane is broken right now and both my dad (co-owner) and Tobias are happy to leave it broken. I, however, am insisting that we get it repaired before we go on our trip. Seriously, what is the point of going on a road trip in the wonderful USA, where Whole Foods opportunities abound, and then not being able to actually cook anything? Restaurants are all well and good, but I think shopping at strange supermarkets and cooking dinner oneself is way more fun. I wonder if Trader Joe's has souvenir reusable shopping bags.
As a self-admitted supermarket junkie (I can hardly travel abroad, without checking out what how the locals shop), I enjoyed this post greatly!
One point I feel compelled to clarify, though (I am a Waterloo native myself): it is no more legal for a supermarket to sell wine in Ontario than it is in BC; only the LCBO, wineries, and winery-owned retail outlets are legally allowed to sell wine in the province.
What you would have seen in your Zehrs would have been a "Wine Rack". These are small boutique stores, owned by Vincor, who lease space from Zehrs. Vincor owns wineries throughout the new world (North America, New Zealand, Australia), but in their Wine Rack stores, they are only allowed to sell wines which have been both produced and bottled within Ontario. So while its possible to buy wine adjacent to some grocery outlets, the choices are very limited, specificly biased, and juicy politics abound.
The law in BC on this point is slightly different than it is in Ontario, in that private liquor stores can be appointed by the LDB, and have much freer reign over what they can sell. There is no legal reason why such a store couldn't arrange to share space with a grocery store, and in fact some do. The liquor store on Quadra Island comes to mind.
So as far as the law is concerned, BC has the *opportunity* for far better synergy between groceries and wine/liquor stores.
Posted by: Steph | October 08, 2007 at 10:58 AM