Grocery Roulette
We tried out a new grocery store yesterday. A bit of a drive for groceries, but we hoped to save enough money to make it worth it. Eileene had already been there once before, and reported real bargains, but she also freely admits to a poor memory for prices.
The bargains were certainly there: snow peas at $1.19/lb., for example, about half what we normally pay. Selection was there, too: the fish department, for example, was so large that I couldn’t bear the smell—not that the fish was spoiled, but it was just too large not to smell strongly. From a safe distance, the fish certainly looked good. An entire aisle was devoted to ground pepper, and the next aisle had the same in paste form.
Unfortunately, the bargains and selection were only for certain items. Red bell peppers, in contrast, were $2.99/lb., about four times the price at our regular supermarket, and milk was a dollar a gallon more. Bread was limited to one shelf, and lunch meat was Oscar Mayer or nothing.
There’s a reason for all this, of course: the market is under Korean ownership, and caters to a neighborhood with a heavy Korean population. Naturally enough, the products that regularly make it to a Korean-American dinner table are in demand, and so come in a wide variety at competitive prices. Staples for our table, however—spaghetti, apples, milk, olive oil—are oddities and delicacies.
Eileene’s perception of the market had been selective, focusing on the things we can’t easily get at Shop-Rite. In the end, our bill was about what we would ordinarily pay, though this may be due to skipping a few overpriced items. We will need to make a separate trip for these. I found it funny to be on the other side of the fence for once, with weird, foreign appetites for weird, foreign foods like breakfast cereals, but I imagine the situation must be wearing for immigrants who have that same experience weekly, or even daily, and no opportunity to retreat to a store that does stock the foods they grew up with.