Shops' best kept secrets

Bambywamby

The nice thing about alot of Lidls stuff is that it is additive free.
I particularly like their applesaft (pure apple juice) - cooked meat and exotic european cheeses - cereals are quite nice certainly worth the money and their nappies are as good as Pampers for a fraction of the price.

I like Sainsburys own dried fruit and nut assortment but they aint cheap.

Morrisons own ready salted crisps are very salty but their salt & vinegar ones are nice and crisp like walkers.

Asda & Morrisons own brand soya milk is as good as provamel and half the price.

Bams x.x

vivaladiva

Aldi used to do gorgeous lemon curd, but seem to have discontinued it. Has anyone else tried it and/or found a comparable one?

Agutka

Anastacia wrote:

Lidl stuff isnt necessarily foreign, its just not familiar packaging, but thats only the first couple of time ofcourse, after that it is familiar as anyones elses.
You can buy carrier bags but in germany most people seem to pack their shopping directly into crates in the trolley & then lift it the car boot. Works fine & doesnt waste bags ( dont think they have carrier bags in germany - they are a lotter hotter on envirnometal issues than we are).
Our Lidl is really nice, not at all grotty, just cheaper. Its not grimey & badly run like the local netto (even i draw the line there)

No, I must have been in another universe. The stock was definitely foreign - french, german, spanish I recognised, lots of others too. All in just-imported-this-morning stacks. The bag thing got to me as I was flustered and wasn't prepared to end up with a trolley full to just chuck in my car - the staff weren't too helpful either. Oh, and no credit cards. They should've given me a leaflet at the door perhaps...

BigMan

ASDA's biccies.

The kids love them for supper, i've had custard creams, digestive's (not dunked them though!), and there version of a caramel wafer (which is very nice).

recovering_spendaholic

Aldi Jaffa cakes - they are just wonderful and so much nicer than McVities.

Contains_Mild_Peril

Agutka wrote:

Okay, I'll own up to my dirty secret. My usual haunts being Sainsbury's and Tesco's, I've only shopped in a Lidl once. And it was a horrible experience. Every bit of stock was foreign (so no idea what stuff is made of - calorie, salt, fat content etc), which meant you had to read the shop signs to know what you were picking up. The prices I suppose were lower, but I had a real problem comparing to what I usually buy. And then I had to find a box to stick everything in, as they didn't give out carrier bags. Is this what Lidl is like, or did I step into some other universe? Because I couldn't shop like this. Reading these posts I might be tempted to visit my local one to see if I imagined things...

I don't like Lidl much either, and only shop there occasionally (usually when they have their half price fruit & veg weeks). The foreign packaging on many products has less information on it because it's printed in so many different languages they just don't have room to tell me everything I want to know. The layout of my local Lidl seems quite random, making things hard to find, and prices are often high up where they're hard for short people like me to read, instead of being on the shelf edges where they should be. The unbearably bright lights dangle a little above head height instead of being on the ceiling where they should be.
The feature I found most shocking on my first visit there was the complete absence of baskets! I naturally assumed that I'd be able to pick up a basket inside the shop, since there was no warning to the contrary, so since I only went in for a few things, I didn't take one of their huge trolleys. When I found out too late that they don't do baskets, I tried to go back the way I came to get a trolley rather than attempt to squeeze past customers at the checkout, and I was greeted by an alarm and a harsh voice recording telling me not to exit via entrance. I finished up buying only what I could carry comfortably around the shop, and going to nearby Morrisons for the rest of my shopping.
On another visit, I got stuck on the way in, when the automatic doors behind me closed (they don't open from the inside) and the barrier in front of me wouldn't open. I tried moving around to persuade it, but it ignored me, and the only staff I could see were distant and quite oblivious to my attempts to attract their attention. I eventually had to crawl under the barrier.

For all the shop's faults, I will say that Lidl's bacon misshapes are the best my family have tried (Tesco's are usually way too salty, Morrisons' too fatty and/or salty and Asda's too bitty) and great vfm - I think they're something like £1.19 for 1kg.

Bambywamby

Most of Lidls stuff is additive free - Brits have alot more junk put in their food than the rest of Europe (sad but true).

The biggest difference you will notice is if you drink some of the German beers from Lidls/Aldis - the Germans are not allowed to add artifical chemicals to their booze - so you are literally getting hops, water and sugar.
So you get all the fabulous taste and virtually no hangover.

I noticed this when in Germany this year - drank alot of beer and very little hangover. The locals explained why...thats why I shop at Lidls for beer/cheese/cooked meats. < Think I am turning into a German.

moggins

I found Lidl and Aldi when I lived in Germany for 3 years, I cheered loudly when I found they were coming to the UK. It's been 20 years since I discovered them and I have never had a bad product in all that time. I find Aldi better for some things, they seem to have a better selection of cooked meats and luxury goods, the only complaint I have is that my local one does not stock plain Quark so I still have to go over to Tesco to buy that.

recovering_spendaholic

moggins wrote:

I found Lidl and Aldi when I lived in Germany for 3 years, I cheered loudly when I found they were coming to the UK. It's been 20 years since I discovered them and I have never had a bad product in all that time. I find Aldi better for some things, they seem to have a better selection of cooked meats and luxury goods, the only complaint I have is that my local one does not stock plain Quark so I still have to go over to Tesco to buy that.

I used to live in Germany too and always shopped in Aldi. Where abouts did you live? I lived in Gelsenkirchen Buer and Recklinghausen in Nordrheinwestphalen, which I loved and also in Aachen, which I hated.