I don’t venture out into the great big wide world full of corporate consumerism often.
And by that I mean I don’t spend an awful lot of time in shopping malls and grocery stores.
Although, suffice it to say that since moving my working life to the ‘burbs, I spend more time at the mall than I ever used to, if only to stave off the insanity and boredom that comes along with a lack of decent food.
Perhap my naiveté is showing, but I prefer the small scale operation; one where you can still get a sense of the human touch. Because of that, we buy 95% of our food groceries from an organic delivery service called The Clean Food Connection, and whatever they don’t have I source from small local grocers (like Friendly Magnolia Fine Foods or Fiesta Farms) in my area.
So, it would be safe to say that I’m not really up to speed on current grocery store trends, which is partially why I was so gobsmacked by my visit last night.
The Everyman had to stop at Dufferin Mall last night to pick up some last minute Christmas presents for a thing we’re going to on Sunday. While he was busy handling that, I thought I’d pop into the on-site grocery store (No Frills) to see if they had any of the last few ingredients I needed to square away for the next cookbook testing I’m working on for Taste T.O. For whatever reason, I was having a very difficult time locating some sambal oolek, dried cherries and scotch bonnet hot sauce, so I figured why not?
Well, first of all, that particular No Frills is like a friggin’ airplane hangar. It’s huge. Massive. Ridiculously overblown. If I had spent the next 6 hours dedicatedly walking around that store, I still wouldn’t have managed to see all that they had to offer. It was also an interesting amalgamation of concepts. By it’s very name and nature, it’s clear that No Frills is the downmarket brand in the Loblaws empire, but this one was surprisingly cosmopolitan. After touring around several aisles trying to find my sambal, I was amazed at the variety of products I found on the shelves.
Cajeta in squeeze bottles that vaguely reminded me of Mrs. Butterworth. Membrillo (quince) jam in giant tin disks. Coconut gels and slices that came in a can. Pandan mooncakes. Pizza flavoured Pocky. Panela sugar. Tamarind candies. And on, and on, and on.
Even the fanciest gourmet stores I’ve been known to frequent don’t stock such a wide swath of products, and most ethnic stores that I’ve been to wouldn’t hold a candle to such bounty, either.
The irony of it all was despite housing probably hundreds of thousands of SKUs, otherwise known as stock keeping units (the barcode #’s that are assigned to everything to track inventory) they also didn’t have dried cherries. They had close to 20 different varieties of pannetone stacked into pyramids by the cash, but dried cherries didn’t make it onto their radar. I did, however find the other stuff I was looking for, as well as some golden syrup (finally) and manuka honey (of dubious quality I’m sure, but I’ll give it a go).
It’s a fascinating world out there in grocery land. The hustle and bustle are still enough to keep me from going back to the old ways (I got sideswiped by a tiny old lady with a granny cart last night) but it’s neat to go back from time to time just to see how the other half live. It’s been close to 10 years since I started using a delivery service (being a long-time fan of Grocery Gateway before we tried to go primarily organic) and most times I don’t really miss it.
But after last night’s excursion, it just highlighted how little I still know about the food of other cultures. Perhaps a trip to the local multicultural megamart every now and then isn’t such a bad way to gain some inspiration, after all.
Until next time…
Tags: Fiesta Farms, Friendly Magnolia, grocery, Grocery Gateway, Loblaws, Mrs. Butterworth, No Frills, Pocky, Purveyors, shopping, Taste TO, The Clean Food Connection
[...] you've never been to the No Frills at Dufferin Mall, it can be a tad overwhelming, especially if you don't normally frequent supermarkets. Oh, but the delights you'll find there. [...]