The first time I heard of burrata it was in article about how it was a rare imported Italian delicacy. Today I expect to find it without trouble when I go grocery shopping. What other foods were you once surprised to find you’re now surprised to not find?
Oranges. When I was a kid growing up in nowheresville Ohio, you didn’t see them all winter unless someone brought some back from Florida.
Fresh strawberries were a seasonal thing for a long time as well
Hummus.
Miso.
Yogurt. It was almost impossible to find back in the 1960’s in the upper midwest (Wisconsin, Michigan).
Tofu.
Kimchee.
Various jarred curry mixes
Sushi rolls.
Gluten-free flours.
Tofu. Organic options. All the produce imported in winter from Chile.
Bagels. Most supermarkets in my area (which admittedly was rural New England) didn’t stock them when I was young.
I’ve gotten spoiled about finding fresh blueberries and blackberries at the supermarket virtually year-round.
Also pufferfish. I figure Kroger is a safe place to buy pufferfish filets. Gas stations, I’m not so sure about.
Probably about two-thirds of the stuff in the store; so way too much to list here.
Comparison is to a small town grocery store in New York State about 1960.
(I don’t think stores around here usually have burrata – for me it’s a TIL; but they certainly have a lot of cheeses I never heard of as a child, including interesting local goat cheeses.)
For that matter, Greek yogurt. When I started working at the grocery store 12 years ago we had one brand in a couple of flavors that took up a small corner of the dairy section. Now it makes up a third of the aisle, and there’s more of it than the traditional yogurt.
My answer is going to be weird for some, especially since as I was born in the mid-70s, by the time I was old enough to be grocery-aware, a lot of things mentioned upthread had become more standard.
But what was rare after I moved away from southern NM, was to find in recent years that I can get good, roasted green chilis in the store in season. Not to mention a wide selection year round of fresh peppers up to and including habaneros. When I first went to college in Colorado, the spiciest thing the stores carried was freaking Pace Picante salsa!
I’m in Switzerland, and when we moved here 20 years ago, I could not get cheddar or any kind of mexican or asian foods in my local stores. I had to go to specialty shops. Even Philadelphia cream cheese was exotic.
On the other hand, I can get creme fraiche, burrata, prosciutto at all of the nearby grocery stores.
In the 1960s migrants from Greece, Yugoslavia and Italy to Australia found that often the only place that sold olive oil was pharmacies.
Yep. Olive oil. I’m just about old enough to remember when people started cooking with olive oil on TV in the UK, and the advice was ‘you might need to ask the chemist’ - supermarkets and groceries didn’t often have it. Chemists sold it in tiny bottles (intended for use medicinally as ear drops)
Rhambutans. Hear me out. I used to only see them at the Asian markets, for $6.99 a pound. They weren’t the freshest, having come a long way, but still yummy.
Suddenly I saw them for $3.99 a pound. But they appeared slightly different. The ones from Asia are mostly red with speckled green and yellow shells, but these were solid deep wine red! And they were clearly very fresh.
Of course I bought them, and they were amazing. No need to bite into the shell as they could be opened at the seam quite easily. Also the flesh of the fruit came easily away from the stone with zero of the woody covering coming away.
(Some clever person is now growing these wonderful fruits in Mexico it seems!)
But the biggest surprise was when I saw them available while shopping online…at the Walmart!
What a world!
Sweet potatoes are harvested in the Fall. They’re very cheap at the grocery. By June there’s a pitiful little pile in the produce section at a higher price. I get frustrated when I can’t buy sweet potatoes and have to buy them canned.
I’ve gotten spoiled with premium coffee in the grocery. I can remember the standard shelf stock was Folgers, Maxwell House and Sanka.
A lot of grocery stores offer English Candy and cookies. I never saw it stocked 30 years ago.
Veganese and Kombucha are a couple that I can immediately think of.
Mangoes.
My uncle brought a bunch back from Thailand around 1974, and they were amazing. I didn’t have one again for years, when I surprisingly found them in the Kroger in Indiana (in a college town, then tended to be ahead of the crowd in what it stocked) in the 90s.
Now I expect to see them at Walmart-- albeit, the best ones are at the Mexican-supplied supermercado (which has amazing produce in general).
Also, when I first became a vegetarian, there really weren’t soy meat substitutes, other then something called Tofu Pups in the freezer section at the co-op, and some dried TVP in the bulk foods at the same place. Rehydrated, the TVP was still nasty (but for some reason, unrehydrated, my cat loved it). The Tofu Pups were delicious, though, which was funny, because I never like meat hotdogs.
I expect to see all sorts of soy “meats” everywhere. There’s even a convenience store that has tofu lunch “meat.”
Albeit, I don’t buy them, because I bake my own, it doesn’t escape me that every grocery or mega- store has a bakery with freshly baked breads now. I’m sure they bake them from frozen dough shipped in, but that still tastes really good, especially compared to bread-in-a-bag, like Wonder bread. So I suppose you could say I expect to see bakery bread. Used to have to go to a standalone bakery if you didn’t make them yourself.
And a confession-- I’ve never been able to manage sourdough, even with starters from friends, so I do buy that.
I am hypoglycemic, so I’m part of the market for sugarfree candy, ice cream, etc., although I don’t buy it often-- I’d rather just be judicious in how I eat the regular stuff, which usually works. But I can find it anywhere. When my mother looked for sugarfree stuff for my diabetic grandfather pending a visit, again, it was specialty shops.
There was even a distinction, I remember, at the candy store (and there was a huge candy store in town when I was a kid), between “dietetic,” (low calorie) and “diabetic” (0 sugar, but not necessarily low calorie, and they gave you exchanges-- I even remember that 1 piece was free, but 4 was a starch exchange or a fat exchange).
Now some of the sugar-free candy specifically says “Not a low calorie food,” and gives exchanges on the label. Mostly chocolate does this, and it’s a fat exchange only. The sugar-free hard candies, not sure about. I buy them instead of cough drops, though.
OMG! That reminds me! You don’t have to go to a kosher store for kosher food anymore! Tons of things have hekshers!