A couple of weekends ago, I had the opportunity to go to a local grocery store and thought that I would share some of the more interesting items that I saw there with fellow TFP'ers.
This store is a Chinese grocery which opened up in the portlands of Toronto (for locals, this is the old Knob Hill Farms store on Cherry St) and stocks some items that shoppers at a typical Dominion or Loblaws or Safeway would see.
Maybe Charlatan has some experience with these now, but here we go.
this is the store, as you can see, it was a rather dismal, snowy and gray day. Inside was a different matter:
The Toronto skyline from the inside (what you can see of it anyway):
As you go inside, the first thing that you encounter is a large, very large sushi counter, where 4 to 5 people are preparing packaged sushi. Yes there were samples too:
Walking past the sushi counter, and down past the take-out dim sum counter, there is the BBQ pork and requisite Chinese butcher:
There was a lady making rice cookies. Here is the machine she used. She would place a small amount of what looked like rice crispies into a holder similar to an espresso maker coffee holder, and the big red machine would slam out the resulting cookie like a frisbee.
I think it hot air popped it. They are quite tastey. $2.99 for a pack of 15.
The seafood had the usual tanks with the hundreds of live fish, eels, oysters, snails and what have you.
These scallops have got to be the largest that I've seen. 3 to 4 inches across. You could make a scallop burger with them:
There was also jelly fish. I bought 2 packs. It tastes awful. I didn't even try the second pack, it went straight into the green bin.
Everybody likes a little tongue eh? How about pig tongues? (so fresh!)
Or even smaller tongues, like duck's?
And, yes, ducks have hearts too:
But Pigs can offer up their stomachs. Maybe they are good in a soup:
Of course the old standby, chicken feet are available. I wonder why there are no duck feet?
After loading up on my meat, I checked out the various tropical fruit:
And ended up buying some passion fruit, grenadilla, dragon fruit and 3 types of Asian pears, all with different flavours:
By the way, the passion fruit tasted the best, the dragon fruit ... not so good.
The complimentary bowl of durian pudding was also a dud ... smelly, and I don't think that I could get used to the taste.
Hope you all enjoyed my tour of the local grocery!!!