The chinese supermarket and why I love it so...

short_bird

Stephen_Leak wrote: »

I love my local Chinese Supermarket (Wai Yee Hong, Eastville, Bristol). Cheap spices. Sichuan pepper. Proper noodles. Tins with just "Contents of Many Animals (Mammal)" on the ingredients list.

:eek:
:rotfl:

thelawnet

short_bird wrote: »

You might be out of luck, I found this
http://www.thai-food-online.co.uk/shopping/shopexd.asp?id=427

which says durian isn't available till May. Let us know if anyone's decided to grow them all year round:eek:

Durian is grown in Indonesia, Malaysia, China, Thailand and others.

It is available year-round, thought not necessarily from Thailand.

The problem is they cost about £12 and the smaller shops don't keep them in.

As it says there:

Durian production is seasonal, with most crops being ready sometime in May (depending upon the weather). At this time Durian can be found on any street corner, usually piled high upon the back fo a pickup truck, and sold inexpensively. At other times of the year the price of Durian raises dramatically, and at these times it is the most expensive non-imported fruit which can be purchased in Thailand.

In other words, in Thailand, Durian is cheap and plentiful from May, but otherwise you can still buy imported fruit the rest of the time. Not entirely relevant to Woking....

http://durianon.tripod.com/id45.html

short_bird

Oh, cheers, I was skimming the page. All year round Durian:eek: once smelt, never forgotten....

terra_ferma

lightisfading wrote: »

thankfully mine is up the road from my work so i can go at lunchtime whenever i fancy

tofu... £1.35 for 3-4 servings pack, water packed and much nicer than cauldron etc

stir fry sauces

thai green curry paste - £1 for a big tub you only need a couple spoonsful for a curry, tried the asda stuff and its tasteless crap! had to add a whole jar to get it to taste of anything.

sweet chilli sauce, oils, seasonings (tubs of cujun, bbq etc for potato wedges for a quid against 60p for a tiny pack at supermarket) ... spices of course but the packs last forever!

cashew nuts ) much cheaper than elsewhere

peach iced tea, mango juice/fizzy pop, root beer in cans (OH is canadian.. proper root beer!

spring roll wrappers - also work for samosas... i make them myself at home and oven cook, MUCH healthier and can be made and frozen in batches.

noodles and rice - both much cheaper than supermarket

coconut milk, tinned baby sweetcorn, tinned chickpeas (about 20p a can). good for dried beans too but our metered electricity is expensive so cheaper to buy cans for me.

noodle snackpots - i buy these occassionally for work, always MUCH tastier than supermarket equivalents. spicy thai ones are great for getting rid of colds

ours also sells vegetarian jerky type stuff... flavoured soy in shelf stable packs... much nicer than it sounds

oh and finally.. plastic containers. ours is about a pound for 10 plastic takeaway style boxes, which are fab for the freezer (single/2 person servings and stack nicely).

its worth going for the service alone.. the couple who run our local one are lovely!

old post, but this just sums it up! (although prices have gone up by something like 70% in 4 hrs...).
Just come back from a trip to a CS, inspired by this thread, and the above poster has got a good list of what I found.
The only comment I would say is to look at the ingredients labels, as most of the Wing Yip own label sauces contain monosodium glutamate. Also watch out for lots of sugar, colourings, etc.

I would add you can find cheap cuts of meat like pig trotters and chicken feet, in the frozen section.

tiredwithtwins

We are very lucky in sheffield in that there are quite a few chinese supermarkets! i use them for soy sauce/chilli sauce/oils/spices/frozen prawns. i also find the polish supermarkets quite useful and cheap too, as well as the many indian grocers for fresh fruit and veg!!

:T

sw-nw

In Edinburgh, I used to go to one in Leith walk as price's good. But now, there is no much difference in price because of more shops and competition. Sometimes it's down to location and convenience. For example, a new one is just opened in Newington called Huaxing (https://www.huaxing.co.uk for you to find address). I was thinking it could be pandas make chinese food more popular. By the way, been to the zoo, the pandas were the most active you could see apart from monkeys.

Come back to the original tropic,
1. is it because it is cheaper than restaurant, so you love chinese supermarket? (sorry, i only read odd post pages, may miss something)
2. Do you go to web sites before shopping in chinese supermarket?
and is it better even for a small chinese supermarket has one?
3. How do you decide which one to go for if there are more?
4. suppose all business can be found on Google maps and Yellow pages, are we going to make another business directory, i can contribute.

Regards

rubytuesday

Thanks for this - have several near by - will pop in for a butchers!

twofishes

Hi everyone. I know this is an old thread but I just joined! I move to Northampton for uni in a couple of days and since I will have even more reason to be a bargainhunter, I was wondering if there were any good Chinese/Indian/Turkish etc supermarkets in Northampton? There seem to be cash and carry ones according to google but can a member of the public use them? Thanks!