Super Metro!

Today I went for the second time to the local Metro shop. My previous visit had been extremely fast because I thought that one could buy there only with the special customer card, thing not true as I found out lately.

I went a couple of times to the two local Carrefour but I was not really satisfied. Those are big market places, yes, but the real international stuff is not so various. In both shops there are maybe a couple of sectors for Western stuff.

So today, weekend in Hefei after several Aikido ones, and before several others (just a break), I went to Metro and check it a bit more seriously than the first time. And I was quite positively surprised.

Lots of Western products, food and not only, but also more house products that I could not find in other large supermarket (don’t know Carrefour). Like a special stain remover for difficult stains on clothes, several cooking tools (for example for oven, that I never saw in other shops), great choice of meats and in general food.

For the Western part:

• cheese: quite a good choice, a bit surprising though they got very big packages, like 1-2 kg of cheddar or similar, like for restaurants. I got some already sliced cheddar, emmental, and a piece of emmental, a box of Philadelphia and another one of Danish blue cheese;
• different meats and hams and salami (Spanish and Italian!) and mortadella (yes, next time!): I took some Parma ham, some mushroom lyoner, real bacon and frozen hamburgers;
• wines: large choice for France and Italy, and then several others at actually good prices.  I went away with 1 red, Barbera d’Alba; 1 white: Verdicchio and 1 rose’: Cerro de la Cruz (Spain);
• bread: with baguette, typical for large shopping places but not only, also some small breads, quite common in Italy, that I took (and already tried with the cheese, after melting in the oven);
• olives (that I took, green one for pasta!) and other kind of cans products, and pasta sauces
• fish, vegetables, fruits and frozen products seem also interesting, but I had already too much stuff alone and did not want to risk buying more!!

Among the other cheeses I saw a wonderful vision: mascarpone!!! And then I looked around and found as well cocoa powder.. so, yes, I got a chance again to make tiramisu! And this time I will put together what I learned last time from my mistakes, and I hope it will be better! Still no lady-fingers though, but this time I try a different approach than last time, using some egg-based special pastry, that I love, called sachima.

The prices are actually sort of honest thinking all these are import products, and from my previous experience in Norway, where for these kind of products you really end up crying expensive tears!! 🙂

Given that Metro is about 10 minutes by bus from my home (Carrefour are rather far away!) I think it is worth to go there once in a while, just to have a bit more Western  taste, especially in wine and cheese side! (And bread..)