Great 'What's Hot and What's not at Aldi, Lidl & Netto' Hunt revisted

Scims

I haven't yet found anything that we don't like. Its a brilliant place to shop. Try it and see. I reckon we save £10-£15 per week.

millyzippycat

Lidl

Go for:

• Cheap white wine in bottles - slightly better & cheaper than other cheap white wine!
• White strong bread flour - gives best of all results in breadmaker and cheapest around, sadly they don't do wholemeal.
• Frozen whole french beans - best frozen whole french beans I've ever tasted and cheap with it.
• Dentalux Mouthwash
• Bourbon Vanilla Icecream - very cheap for a 'premium' icecream and not at all bad
• Tio Nico Sherry - if you want to drink sweet sherry or use it in cooking this is pretty indistinguisable from market leader brands and much cheaper
• Bleach. It's certainly cheap but whatever do people do with all those varieties and sizes of ultra environmentally unfriendly bleach?

Avoid:

• Most fruit and veg - the two Lidl's I can access specialise in sagging cucumbers, green veg turning yellow and similar. (Might be different if you could shop the day they got their delivery) but overall my local greengrocer is much better quality and for many things just as cheap and worth the bit extra for the others
• Emmental cheese - like non-flavoured rubber
• Olives. They are certainly cheap but lack the certain something in the flavour which makes olives worth eating in the first place.
• Bleach. Cheap bleach seems to be the speciality of the deep discounters? Most of it can't really be needed?

Conclusion:

Given that I'm a vegetarian, don't eat breakfast cereals, eat little canned or prepared meal stuff and not catering for children - so rarely buy biscuits, crisps, etc - it wouldn't be worth going to Lidl (both stores involve a shortish but special trip) if I didn't drink wine and bake my own bread : - ). As it is if I can time the occasional trip right and stock up on bread flour and cheaper wine etc, it makes it worth while to also stock up on some frozen french beans, icecream etc.

Aldi

Go for:

• Almost nothing. The only Aldi I can access involves a significant drive from my workplace in a direction where I normally can't access anything else, so it has got to be more than one or two things to make it worthwhile. On the two or three visits I've been able to make I just haven't found things that I wanted to buy again.
• Like all such discounters they seem to offer very cheap prices on bleach and devote a lot of space to it. Whatever do people do with all this bleach???

Avoid:

• frozen corn on the cob - awful, tough and no sweetness
• mayonnaise and salad cream - pretty much taste free. This is a particular downer as these aren't healthy foods and getting all the fat with none of the taste is a real downer!

Conclusion:

They may well stock stuff I would like but it is so far out of my way that it is not worth experimenting further given that I feel the products I've bought up to now were a poor use of limited funds. W

Netto

I seem to live in a Netto free zone...

Waste_not...

Ok, top three Lidl buys:

Frozen Tuna Steaks - brilliant, especially when on special offer.
Shortbread - This is just the best I've tried anywhere.
Salami - in fact most of their cured meats are pretty good.

crafty1

Aldi love

Toilet Paper
Weetabix - kids love them
Baby Wipes
Tubey yogurts
Frozen Chips
Sausages
Fruit
Veg - just check quality first!
Own brand Twix (bargin)
Medium sliced Bread (Best bread around in my opinion & only 45p)
Pizza frozen and fresh about £1.69
Jalepeno and cheese in breadcrumbs (can't remember proper name - we call them jalepeno bullets!!)
Wine fav is called Bordeaux £3.49 (am enjoying a glass now)
Ham is ok
Cheese is ok
Milk
Small cartons of orange/apple.

Don't like
Frozen/Fresh ready meals, not nice at all

limitingfactor

What's hot at Aldi and Lidl -

They both do cheap cycling stuff a few times a year - clothing, shoes, saddles, pedals etc.
A lot of it is surprisingly good. 90% of my cycling clothes are from Aldi and Lidl - you have to be a bit selective but there's lots of good stuff available. Example: long sleeve winter cycling top - nice and warm, not too baggy, reflective piping: £8 or so compared with £30+ for a branded one. I've done two winters in mine, about 1000 miles, and it's still as good as new. I do wash it occasionally :-)
You just have to keep an eye on the websites or leaflets to know when to go.

Judyjay_2

In Aldi we [and the cat] like - in no particular order!

Cat food, the one in the foil sachets
Soap powder tablets
Duck spring rolls [frozen]
Pizza [frozen]
Frosty's icecream
The other luxury icecream - chocolate and zabglione flavour
Vegetable crisps
Gold teabags
Instant coffee
Chocolate - the fruit and nut has far more of both than another well known leading brand
little sesame seed biscuits
Tiramisu in pots
Fromage frais
Lemon and ginger tea - recommended by my sister
Ham is ok
Pate is ok
Make up removal pads, lip gloss, face creams, toothpaste etc all been very good.

Don't bother with the lamb shanks - not much meat and tough!!
The fruit and veg are ok if you are eating them soon. They never seem to last long for me.

We've had a sat nav, memory sticks and various other techy stuff which has all been very good.

troi78

Won't list items as most have been covered. I defected from Tesco a few months ago and save at least £30 per week. Several reasons:

1. The prices (obviously)
2. Less choice within food types (this is a good thing)
3. Less stuff available (this is also a good thing).

And one other very important thing is that it takes me only 45 minutes, which includes travelling 3 miles to get there and back, to do my weekly shopping. It used to take me 2 hours in store in Tesco and over an hour online.

Heard today that Aldi have just won Retailer of the Year. Gave me a warm, cosy feeling :rotfl:

grpics

WE used to shop at Lidl but find the groceries to be much better quality at Aldi, plus the shop itself doesn't resemble kwik-save. :rolleyes:

Hot at Aldi -

Cycling clothes. I stock up twice a year, without the silly prices of branded clothing.
Frozen lasagne, delicious.
Sultana bran
Fruit and fibre
Chocolate hoops and coco pops
Mars, twix and snickers clones
Bottled water
Onion and chive flavoured brie
Chicken thighs and drumsticks
That blue vodka stuff, my wife loves it!
Fruit and veg seems good
Chocolate biscuits
Choc chip cakes

Not -

Bananas, they always seem bruised and mushy
Bread, always a bit dry even when well inside the sell by date

seren77

LIDL
We buy:
unsmoked bacon double packs
luxury ham
2 pk tiramisu (fantastic)
lasagne
cereals
chocolate
biscuits
potatoes
fruit - berries, apples, bananas
cleaning goods
toothpaste and toothbrushes
mouthwash
loo rolls
kitchen towels
washing up liquid
washing powder
ice cream
joint of beef (lovely when pot roasted)
free range eggs
plain salted crisps
orange juice
high juice blackcurrant
Porridge (in small blue paper type packet) fantastic and 34p a packet
Green pesto (excellent)
cooking oil
tagliatelle
fish fingers
smoked salmon
salmon steaks
ice cream
boil in the bag rice

We AVOID

Chickens - the two we've had were horrible, totally tasteless and watery

Burgers - these were so bad that none of us could bring ourselves to mention just how bad incase we were sick. We still turn green if we so much as think about them.

gaskellg2

My best buys at Aldi are the ground coffee, the fresh fruit and veg. Try the individual ice creams. Also the plum tart fantastic with their fresh cream.
They also have some very good red wine.

Lidl good buys are butter,red wine and some good bargins.