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The best way to tour a city is through its grocery store
- frankus 7y agoShopping for food in grocery stores was one of the highlights of touring Switzerland in a rented motorhome (for the record Migros > Coop > Aldi IMO).
- etqwzutewzu 7y agoSwiss here. Globus > Manor > Coop > Migros. Aldi and Lidl are in Switzerland too but they are German and Migros > Aldi > Lidl.
- mikeholler 7y agoI've been telling friends and family this for years. It's by far my favorite thing to see in a new city in a region I've never been before. It's sort of like a modern anthropological exhibit in more ways than any other single city structure. There was a photography coffee table book I loved, where the artist took pictures of an entire family around their table, which had all of the food they ate for a week on it. I've since forgotten the name of the book (if anyone knows it please tell me -- search isn't turning up much), but grocery stores feel like as close as a regular tourist can get to those personal scenes.
- pokoleo 7y agohttps://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984074422/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0984074422&linkCode=as2&tag=fstoppers-20&linkId=FIHIVBEP2BY3FNDA https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0984074422/ref=as_li_tl?ie...
- GuiA 7y agoHungry Planet by Peter Menzel https://fstoppers.com/food/what-week-groceries-looks-around-world-3251 https://fstoppers.com/food/what-week-groceries-looks-around-...
- alteria 7y agoThe book you're thinking of is probably Hungry Planet[1] [1]https://menzelphoto.photoshelter.com/gallery/Hungry-Planet-Family-Food-Portraits/G0000zmgWvU6SiKM/C0000k7JgEHhEq0w https://menzelphoto.photoshelter.com/gallery/Hungry-Planet-F...
- mikeholler 7y agoYes! This is it. Thank you!
- mc32 7y agoWhat’s amazing about that is the unnecessary or excessive packaging becomes evident. Underdeveloped nations haven’t yet gotten in the bad habit of wrapping everything in plastic. Grains are in reused sacks, meat is straight from the butcher. I mean, sure I get egg cases and wrapped meats. But some places put vegetables and fruits in styropacks.... why?
- escapecharacter 7y agoI’ve been saying the same! Also, when you go to corner stores, you can see what the locale considers “high priority items”
- jonathanbull 7y agoNot quite what you're looking for, but Time recently did a great piece on what kids eat around the world. You might enjoy it: https://time.com/what-kids-eat-around-the-world-in-one-week/ https://time.com/what-kids-eat-around-the-world-in-one-week/
- mikeholler 7y agoWow, this is great. Thank you!
- personlurking 7y ago> It's sort of like a modern anthropological exhibit in more ways than any other single city structure. I seem to mainly recall the negative experiences. In Rome, on vacation, I remember a grocery store where there were only two cashier lanes open, and long lines, and the two cashiers were facing each other, just havin' a five-minute chat about something unrelated to their work. This might have been an unusual event, since I've never lived in Italy. In Portugal, where I lived several years, you're just out of luck. The cashiers are as slow as molasses. Also, one particular major chain seemed to have this weird occurrence of always looking ransacked and constantly being restocked during every one of their opening hours. And the "we're opening a new lane" thing wasn't "next person in current line is first in the new line". It would be a free-for-all, especially for newcomers. In Netherlands, a major chain in Amsterdam would only take cash or a Dutch credit card. Visa/Mastercard from elsewhere were not accepted forms of payment.
- mfenniak 7y ago> In Netherlands, a major chain in Amsterdam would only take cash or a Dutch credit card. Visa/Mastercard from elsewhere were not accepted forms of payment. Same experience just recently -- Albert Heijn. You'll find this grocery story every 50 meters in a major city like Amsterdam. No credit cards. It was pretty odd to me as a Canadian.
- personlurking 7y agoYep. I had to leave everything I had just gone through the store to pick out. I prefer Albert Heijn for their selection but shopped at Lidl cause they'd take my cards.
- emj 7y agoI does tell you something about how much of a cut the credit card companies take from retailers and customers.
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- fhbdukfrh 7y agoAs a kid the differences between Canadian and American grocery stores was amazing. Especially chocolate bars. Not so different anymore, aside from the prevalence of corn based sweeteners.
- qychtkd 7y agoYou still can’t get Mr. Big in American grocery stores.
- fbelzile 7y agoOr Kinder Surprise eggs [0]. No problems going to Walmart to pick up a firearm though... [0] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/why-are-kinder-surprise-eggs-illegal-in-the-usa-10055273.html https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/feat...
- cm2012 7y agoMy local grocery store (New York City) has lots of kinder eggs always. So do some local corner stores.
- starky 7y agoHonestly, I don't understand how the US doesn't get any of the good chocolate bars: Coffee Crisp, Crispy Crunch, Eat More, Wunderbar, Smarties (not the chalky candies, those are Rockets), and Aero.
- qychtkd 7y agoLibraries are also a good way to tour a city. Get a transit card from a grocery store or a convenient store (also a lotto ticket because you never know). Start with the main branch, then on to the various neighborhood branches. It’s important to pick a section you are interested in beforehand. Fiction might be too overwhelming, so I’d go for the math or computer technology sections. Once you’ve done this in multiple cities you can compare the sizes of those sections between different cities and how current the books are, i.e, for tech books, do they have books on the latest trend in programming languages. Go to coffee shops and bakeries in between. I can usually squeeze in the main branch and one or two neighborhood branches in a day. Research the city to figure out which neighborhood libraries to go.
- rcpt 7y agoCemeteries to
- donarb 7y agoRecord and book stores as well.
- L_Rahman 7y agoThis is great. I'd add for Brazil, a great alternative to the libraries are SESCs. SESCs are cultural centers, funded by a payroll tax proposed by big business in the 50s when they were afraid of Communist sympathies in population. The result are extremely well funded community centers with big arts budgets for free exhibitions, exercise facilities, primary care clinics, libraries, cafeterias with affordable food and lots of space for people to lounge around. In many neighborhoods, they're the epicenter of social life. They've been a terrific way to break out of the downtown Sao Paulo bubble.
- dotsarefun 7y agoWhich city only has one grocery store?
- msla 7y agoDepends on how you define "city", but one city I lived in only has one grocery store now; it has a population under 10,000, so whether you call that a "city" is up to you. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havre,_Montana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Havre,_Montana http://havrechamber.com/business-directory/category/groceries-meat-beverage http://havrechamber.com/business-directory/category/grocerie... (Gary and Leo's IGA is the grocery store. McLean's Grocery is a convenience store that sells some food.)
- gumby 7y agoEast Palo Alto has only one, and struggled for years without a grocery store or bank.
- msla 7y ago> East Palo Alto has only one, and struggled for years without a grocery store or bank. I understand that it's an independent polity, but it's also surrounded by other urban areas. I can get a 51 minute bus ride from an apartment complex in East Palo Alto to a Safeway, which does cost about $5 but that's a discussion for another day; my point is, East Palo Alto only has "one grocery store" if you ignore everything surrounding it. https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Runnymede+Gardens+Apartments/Safeway,+2811+Middlefield+Rd,+Palo+Alto,+CA+94306/@37.4508118,-122.1646138,14z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x808fbb7b313c1a19:0x8adbd047ae42a7d9!2m2!1d-122.1399063!2d37.4689395!1m5!1m1!1s0x808fba57b720bf77:0x3b8438e41aa6f636!2m2!1d-122.1273277!2d37.4330319!3e3 https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Runnymede+Gardens+Apartments...
- gumby 7y agoAn hour's bus ride (assuming you catch the schedule right) each way is pretty ruinous for someone working long hours or with kids to look after. I think it hardly counts as "local".
- ryanwaggoner 7y agoWhen I land in a new city, I spend the first day with no plan, just wandering about. It's surprising how much of a feel you can get for the texture of daily life in a city by doing this. From my perspective, food and all the rituals and customs around it are some of the richest parts of culture, so I also like to go to grocery stores like this article covers. Another half-day is dedicated to a food tour, which is a fantastic way to learn about a new culture. In my experience, often the tour guides have lived in that culture for many years but they're not originally from there, so they can do cross-cultural translation for you, pointing out things you might not expect. And the best tours also include walking around the city and seeing cultural highlights.
- lanrh1836 7y agoI would say farmers market even more so than a grocery store, though I usually do both. Ironically I also love going to foreign McDonalds. Always fun to see what local items they have.
- davidw 7y ago> foreign McDonalds. Always fun to see what local items they have. That's a good point. It's funny for Americans to see beer there, in, say, Europe.
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- umvi 7y agoIt's also weird to see lots of "vices" (beer, cigarettes, condoms, etc) in vending machines on the street. Like, when I was in Italy I saw kids buying beer and cigarettes and no one seemed to care!
- ImaCake 7y ago>Ironically I also love going to foreign McDonalds. I make a point of getting a McDonalds cheeseburger in every country I visit. Austria has the best meat (Germany the worst). Poland tasted like Australia (my home) and the UK burger was the most plastic like. Italy, UAE, and Hong Kong all deviate quite a bit from the "regular" menu but I visited the latter two at the airport so maybe they are outliers.
- donarb 7y agoFunny because McDonald’s is now featuring items here in the US that are popular overseas. Currently they are featuring a Grand McExtreme Bacon Burger from Spain and a Stroopwaffel McFlurry from the Netherlands.
- Rebelgecko 7y agoThey also have a chicken sandwich supposedly from Canada... I'm surprised they didn't bring down the poutines or even fish and chips
- Causality1 7y agoTo answer the mystery from the first paragraph the author leaves hanging, the avocado in question was probably a B-cultivar, either Florida avocado, Fuerte avocado, or Monroe avocado.
- tobr 7y agoYes! Walking into a grocery store is one of the best things about traveling. It is one of the few genuine everyday activities that are easily available to a tourist, but is going to be quite different to what you’re used to from home, sometimes in surprising ways. Hopefully this will not disappear entirely as brands and chains become more and more homogenized across the world. One of the saddest examples of this is how nearly every brand of ice cream in Europe became part of Unilever’s ugly “Heartbrand” in the late ‘90s. Now anywhere you go, you will just be offered the same Magnum, Solero, Cornetto. Who wants to take a vacation photo eating an ice cream you could find in your local store at home?
- ForRealsies 7y agoA more pragmatic take when looking for a place to move to: checking out the local grocery store will tell you everything you need to know about that area.
- BurningFrog 7y agoCandy and pastry still seem to be mostly unique in every country. Always a joy - or at least a surprise :) - to try the local snack in a new place!
- nextos 7y ago> [...] nearly every brand of ice cream in Europe became part of Unilever’s ugly “Heartbrand” in the late ‘90s. Now anywhere you go, you will just be offered the same Magnum, Solero, Cornetto This is true, but a bit of an exaggeration. In the UK and Scandinavia, many small dairies are producing nice ice creams which you can buy in regular supermarkets. In fact, a favorite thing of mine is trying to find said ice creams without any gelling agents (carrageenan, gum, etc.) which are really harsh to gut biota. There are quite a few. Obviously, Unilever's is not one of them.
- mixmastamyk 7y agoLatin America too. Interestingly, each country has it's own name, often the name of an old-time ice cream company that has since went out of business. In the US it is "Good Humor." Took me a few years during my backpacking days to figure it out. While odd, I never thought of it as "ugly."
- diablerouge 7y agoI'm not in a position to do much traveling right now, but I get my kicks visiting small foreign markets here in the United States. Some things you can't get anywhere else, and it's always fun to see what things are considered Staples for different cultures. For example, I have found that the Russian markets have the best pickles and bread, and the Vietnamese markets have an awesome deli and really good produce, and there's a Caribbean market near my house that carries Ting, which is my favorite grapefruit soda.
- johnchristopher 7y agoHey, are you from Belgium (Wallonia) ?
- z2 7y agoIndeed--there's a halal market I just discovered today that has the most reasonably priced semolina and spices I've seen. Ignorant me believed that semolina came only from large retailers or specialty Italian shops (i.e. sellers of expensive cheese and wine).
- jschwartzi 7y agoI buy all my spices from regional markets. There's a Halal market west of my girlfriend's place which is where I buy my fenugreek and olive oil because his prices per gallon are very reasonable, and he actually stocks fenugreek unlike every single other store I've been to in the area. And if I need MSG I go to the asian market because I can buy it for $2.00/lb.
- PascLeRasc 7y agoSpanish grocery stores are incredible, you really get a feel for the tapas culture. Everyone stops by after work just to get their late afternoon meal/snack and breakfast for tomorrow. You can't go wrong with any of the <7€ wines, and the salami and cheese selection is superb too. I was in Kyoto a few months ago, and wandering through the Kyoto Co-op grocery was super fun. So many kinds of green tea I had never heard of, and again, there's a sense of the Japanese minimalist cooking culture. Almost no one in Japan owns an oven, and most places I've seen just have 1-2 standalone electric burners, so baking either isn't done or it'll be something small in a toaster oven. I love grocery shopping in general, but if you're abroad I'd highly recommend checking out local grocery stores.
- kurthr 7y agoIf you're in Tokyo (Taito City), go see Kappabashi Dogu-gai or Chef's Street. It has an amazing collection of cookware, dining sets, chairs, signs, place mats, cooking knives, and plastic food.
- js2 7y agoIt seemed like when I was in Italy I was the only American who knew not to look for eggs in the refrigerator. But that didn't help me when a cashier got impatient with me for not having weighed my produce in advance. Who knew?
- forinti 7y agoIn Colombia I found it (very!) strange that meat was not displayed in a refrigerator. I've never seen eggs being sold from refrigerators though.
- js2 7y agoIn the U.S. eggs are washed and refrigerated. You find them at the back of the grocery near the dairy. (Unless you get them at s farmers market or roadside stand.)
- Scoundreller 7y agoOr the dirty look the cashier gives you when you do weigh out your bananas, but slap the sticker on the fruit itself instead of a bag...
- kqr 7y agoI can imagine this is great for people who don't have deadly food allergies. For me, navigating foreign grocery stores has become so filled with anxiety, doubly so in a country where you don't know the language.
- ImaCake 7y agoIf you are interested in more genuine experiences in the countries you visit I recommend learning at least 100 words in the local language. It's a pretty low bar, but it will take you a long way! Some of my most memorable holiday moments have been over some fumbled german or trying to build a sentence out of my very limited Japanese vocab.
- rootsudo 7y agoI'm glad I'm not alone in this! you can tell so much from a grocery store, and it's something I always do. People commented that It's odd, but nothing is better than local selection and too many people really value "experience" over price. I don't care if you can get the same item from the company in it's fancy downtown store, or a few blocks away at the grocery store. It don't really matter and becomes a tourist trap.
- archy_ 7y agoSadly, this doesn't apply to America. Our grocery stores are very much homogenized, and in many parts of the country the only grocery store will be Walmart. Urban areas will have higher end chains that stock a wider variety and some foreign and independent stores with unique selections, but once you get past the cities and into rural America, your options for groceries are about the same from town to town.
- maxerickson 7y agoHow big is "town"? The towns of ~10,000 that I know that have Walmarts have multiple competitors to the Walmart, and smaller towns don't have the Walmart but may have a local grocer.
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoI know of "towns" that are the ~4th largest city in the state. Their economy is tourism based calling themselves a town and having a town style government fits their brand image better.
- maxerickson 7y agoYes, I was asking for their meaning there, not trying to discuss the borderline meaninglessness of the word.
- quicklime 7y agoI've been making it a point to visit grocery stores in every country I visit for the last 10 years. I tend to agree with you that grocery stores tend become homogenized within a country (and not just in the US), but there's always a lot of variation between countries. You'll probably find this strange, but as a foreigner, I was really excited to see Walmart for the first time, and I found it just as interesting as visiting grocery stores in other countries. There are things there that just seem comically American - like there's a McDonald's inside a supermarket! And there's a section where you can pick up guns and ammo while you're buying milk and eggs! The chocolates section contains the same products as every other store across North America, but I'd never seen any of these while growing up in Australia, so we picked up a lot of these. Even basic things like bread taste different from back home. Other stores are interesting in different ways. The size and scale of Costco is insane. Whole Foods and Trader Joe's carry different brands of everything, so it feels very different shopping there. I'm really looking forward to my next visit to the States, and picking up the bacon flavored popcorn from Trader Joe's. I've never seen this anywhere else in the world, and it's as awesome as it sounds :)
- jedberg 7y agoWhenever I'm in a new country or region, I always make a point to go to the grocery store and the McDonalds. Both tend to have unique items that you can't find anywhere else.
- tootie 7y agoVegetarian McDonald's in India was certainly different but it was also kinda gross.
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 7y agoI recently tried a KFC in Bangalore. Deep-fried chickpea fritters in spicy biryani rice is a pretty long way from what the Colonel started out with.
- m3kw9 7y agoForeign grocery stores are definitely a under appreciated tourist spot. Just see Japan for example, it blows me away with lots of wtf moments
- dsfyu404ed 7y agoWhen I visit a foreign country I always make sure I go to a junkyard (preferably a self service one) and buy something. You tend to have very "authentic" interactions with the locals in that kind of setting. It makes for great stories that simultaneously allow you to brag to your coworkers about how "authentic" (or whatever) your tourism experience was while also making them uncomfortable. 10/10, highly recommend.
- mherdeg 7y agoInteresting idea! I wandered around a thrift store in Bern once and found some weird secondhand stuff -- mannequins apparently for sale, fur stoles, mattresses, chandeliers, clocks galore, oil paintings, dress shoes, model trains, china, flasks, buttons, yarn -- all piled high, priced about 50% of what you might pay in a retail store (which is still very expensive), and sold in what looked like a very large single-family house in the middle of a quiet residential neighborhood that had been somehow emptied out and turned into three rambling stories of loosely scattered miscellany. Reviewing the map now, apparently just down the street at 24 Pappelweg there was an even bigger, more commercialized thrift-store operation, a Barner Brocki Plus, which might have had what I was actually looking for (a men's coat). Oops. At least I got to read the local news and find out that, yes, their version of the American thrift store is a bit different and a bit pricier (e.g. https://www.derbund.ch/bern/stadt/brockenhaeuser-sind-zwar-stubenrein-dafuer-aber-teurer/story/22526852 https://www.derbund.ch/bern/stadt/brockenhaeuser-sind-zwar-s... ), which was an interesting way to learn a new culture.
- Scoundreller 7y agoLook around the supermarket too. In France, a bakery can thrive next to a supermarket because enough people mistrust the supermarket's quality. In N. America, a supermarket opening is a death sentence for nearby food vendors.
- egypturnash 7y agoI just moved back home to New Orleans after twenty-something years in various other corners of the US, and seeing the aisle of local products is both disorienting and familiar. There’s a few brands with pro-looking graphic design, a few of which have made it out of the state (you can buy Zararain’s stuff elsewhere, for instance), and a lot of brands you’ve never heard of outside Louisiana with labels that look designed by the owner’s cousin who has the Adobe suite. The stuff with the amateurish labels is inevitably the best. It’s not packed with preservatives and stretchers and all the other crap you have to adulterate your food with to be able to ship it across the country and have it be shelf-stable. There’s other surprises around the grocery store, but the feeling’s most intense in the Local Seasonings Aisle at the local Rouse’s.
- jedimastert 7y agoI recall a work trip to a conference in Anaheim (California, US, right outside of LA but still in the metro area). It was my first real work trip and I was disappointed because I wasn't seeing very much of Anaheim outside of the more tourist-y stuff, as the area around the conference center/hotel was one giant tourist trap. So, I ended up at the local Target at around 9am, and I'm really glad I did, because I felt like I was seeing a more real part of the city than the rest of the time combined.
- pishpash 7y agoOr take public transit around town.
- starky 7y agoWhen people go to China for the first time I always recommend that they go walk through a Walmart there precisely for the reason that it is a friendly and familiar place, but also highlights just how different the food culture is in that country vs. at home. I'm pretty sure it was the only piece of tourism advise my Chinese colleague gave me when I went for the first time, and I've passed it on ever since.
- kweks 7y agoYup, bags of live frogs are not what you'd typically expect in a Walmart !
- Scoundreller 7y agoWhen I do this, I inevitably have to explain each decision to my hosts: > “Why did you buy this cheese?” It was obviously a pricing error, there’s no way a hunk of real cheese only costs 2 EUR
- Scoundreller 7y agoWas surprised in France to find out Kronenbourge comes in a plain formula. I thought 1664 was all it ever came in.
- kidsil 7y agoI've been saying that for years! Every single new country I visit, the first thing I check is the local supermarket.