Supermarket run

I don't live in Bangsar, so on the rare occasions I'm there, I get tingles of excitement. Not because of the various food, coffee or boozing places in the Telawi area, but because of the Village Grocer at Bangsar Village.

Imagine the variety of Cold Storage (and then some) at prices comparable to Carrefour and Giant (for most items).

Minus the traffic jam and endless circling for a parking spot.

Minus vegetables that look as if they've been into a salad and back.

Minus kiasu aunties who poke and prod at fresh produce, leaving bruises and marks on perfectly decent looking ones.

Minus the same kiasu aunties who try to run you down with their full trolleys, just to beat you to the checkout counter. This, when their trolleys are loaded enough to end world hunger and all you have in your hand is a bunch of parsley.

Speaking of parsley, Carrefour doesn't have parsley half the time.
And you can forget about Giant.

What about the time I was looking for fresh button mushrooms? For 2 weeks, Carrefour and Giant were out of stock. But at the Village Grocer (VG), I found not only button mushrooms, but portabellos, FRESH golden enokis, shitakes, and a few types I'd never seen before.

To further illustrate my point, take the dairy section. At one glance in hypermarkets, you'll see the usual choice of milk, yogurt and cheese. If you're lucky, maybe a few choices of whipped and sour cream. As for stuff like mascarpone cheese or sponge fingers (I'm making Tiramisu this weekend), don't even bother. You won't find it. But at the VG, you get THREE brands of mascaporne cheese to choose from. And several different brands of sour cream alone. In full fat AND light versions.

If you want to compare prices, look at a block of Kraft Philadelphia Cream Cheese. It costs the same in both VG and Carrefour. And across the board, prices for most items are quite comparable too.

Now the fresh produce department.
The veges and fruits in VG are always looking decent. No rotting, mulching leaves or dirty, muddy potatoes. And while these are slightly pricier than the ones in Carrefour and Giant, at least they don't look as if a thousand hands have had their way with them, before being discarded back into the pile.

Oh, and did I mention that this was the only place with frozen turkey a week before Christmas last year? Carrefour sold out about 3 weeks before (although they were the cheapest). And Cold Storage was selling turkey at a good 20% higher price.

Now the all important ice cream. You can buy Baskin Robbins at Carrefour by the pint. But for just another RM2, you can buy Ben & Jerry's from the VG. In cool flavours like Chunky Monkey or Chubby Hubby too.

I could go on. Like VG's range of oils, vinegars and other condiments. Fresh herbs. Fresh unique veges like rhubarb, dill, fennel and big fat leeks. More than five varieties of tomatoes. Beers (local and imported ones). Biscuits. Tinned food. Processed meats. And gourmet deli meats.

More variety and decent prices in one small little space.
I like!

Anyway, enough of that.
Do drop by to my foodie blog for some foodie posts (like a recent attempt at Sacher Torte) and future baking projects - a tiramisu, blueberry muffins (I bought some blueberries from VG), a durian cake, a Nigella Coffee Espresso cake, recipe courtesy of Snowie and a pumpkin pie.

Yummers.