Good work people, made me laugh several times- especially Mangetout- careful there, anymore chat like that, and Sainsbury’s will be begging you to come work for them as there new “food namer”
Personally, Sainbury’s is my favourite, though I haven’t been in one in yonks- when did the image overhall take place? Although, now I come to think of it, I only shop in Sainsbury’s when I’m staying with my folks, who own a restaurant- so I always have a ready supply of basic ingredients at my fingertips, and only go there for the unusual stuff anyway. Same with the Marks and Sparks food section- good stuff, but it’s so expensive that I can only ever image visiting Saudi oil barons being able to shop there on a regular basis.
When I did have to buy staples for myself, back in my student days, I used to LOATHE Tesco’s- the one nearest me was one of those inner-city tesco Metro places, the layout of which seemed to have been handled by some particularly sadistic child- “What’s that you say? Make sure there’s not enough room for 2 trollies to pass each other in an aisle? Excellent suggestion Timmy!” Safeways’s was my favourite in those days.
Out here in Hungary, as you might expect, things are a little different. The idea of the out of town supermarket with car parks stretching to the horizon is just taking off here. The charge from foriegn companies into this market is being lead by…you guessed it, Tesco, who have built what is apparently the biggest Tesco anywhere in the world about 15 minutes drive outside of Budapest.
It’s open 24 hours, which in itself is pretty revoltionary considering most Hungarain food shops close over the weekends, apart from, perhaps, Saturday morning, at the hours when any self-respecting person is still in bed with a hangover.
Another thing about Hungary is the compartively small range of products available- mostly just the ingredients for the traditional Hungarian dishes, and locally grown produce, subject to seasonality (which is usually delicious- and actually, I kind of like living in a world where fruit and veg have seasons again. Makes it much easier to get excited about them when they appear) . Anything that differs from this is usually either massively expensive, or almost impossible to track down.
Having visited France over the summer, I must say that they have cornred the market in great food shops of all shapes and sizes- not so much for the ambiance, which is so-so in the supermarkets, but for the range and quality of products available. Ummm, French fooood…
