Life and Times in the Southern Capital
Shopping
Afternoon at Metro
Apr 27th
Spent the afternoon at Metro, and seems they are adding some new stock lately. It’s a real pain to get to, and their prices aren’t always the best, but they do have by far the largest stock of imported food stuffs in Nanjing. Also, if you go during the week, the place is especially dead, it’s almost worth the trip just to shop in wide aisled peace and quiet!
Feta, Sour Cream, etc. The selection seems to grow every time I go in.
People overseas get a laugh when I tell them I usually buy my Bleu Cheese from Ikea, but looks like I may have to either give that up or blatantly lie as the prices seem better at Metro.
Decent selection of wines under ~70RMB, but have had some real horrible stuff. Have been meaning to start keeping a record of what I’ve tried….
Ton of wine and large liquor selection behind that.
First time I’ve noticed, but they now have TimTams. For those uninitiated, these are disgustingly(or deliciously) sweet chocolate covered wafer type cookies that are originally from Australia. Seriously one of the most intensely sweet things I’ve ever eaten.
More info:
Metro （麦德龙）
近郊雨花台区卡子门大街98号
Tortilla Time
Apr 14th
Take that Old El Paso. No more of your overpriced imported tortillas. Metro now has these Shanghai made tortillas frozen in the bakery for ~15 RMB per dozen. These won’t keep as long once unfrozen as those Old El Paso bio-engineered mutant tortillas, but believe me, that is a good thing!
Things I like #001: Darlie Tea Toothpaste
Apr 1st
Black Man Dragon Well Green Tea Toothpaste
Despite any moral issues with the “Black Man” brand, this toothpaste is awesome, not scientifically or results wise, those I can’t attest to, but the taste is great. What first sounds like it may be odd or disgusting actually works out really well. Once I tried this stuff, I couldn’t switch back to typical mint flavored stuff. Just hoping I don’t get tea stains on my teeth from my toothpaste….
More info on Darlie aka Darkie aka 黑人牙膏 (Blank Man Toothpaste)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darlie
Breakfast: Round 2
Oct 13th
Not really sure why most of my posts revolve around food.. I really do stuff other than eat, and I actually eat a lot more Chinese than Western food. I guess that after you are here awhile, all that “Ohh!! I ate Snake\Dog\Pig’s Face\Etc. today!” stuff becomes fairly mundane, and hardly seems worth sharing with others. But when I find a Western type service offering I am pretty floored and want to tell everyone I see how amazing it is that it’s now in Nanjing… So guess that’s what I’ll do until the new Western arrivals stop amazing me.
The other day I was in Carrefour (actually my first time there since I first went to get some Subway) and wasn’t too surprised to see Cereal, they have carried it since they opened in Nanjing a decade ago, but as I passed the display I did a double take and had to turn around. The Cereal was on sale for 16RMB. The box was only 150grams, but anyone who has bought Western cereal in China knows, the markup is typically in the 40-60RMB range for what is still a pretty small box. The cereal is also packaged for China, in the past I have bought cereal that was pretty much for “Asia” with a ton of different languages on the box. This one is all Chinese, though the cereal is actually made in Thailand. Maybe this has been going on for awhile, but it’s the first time I’ve seen it with such low prices and variety (though I honestly just usually go to my local supermarket, Metro once a month or so and Times Grocery when I really need some cheese or tortillas; I try to get in and out of Carrefour as quickly as possible to avoid the crowds whenever I find myself there). But looks to be a good sign for cereal lovers that Kellogg’s looks to be doing things on a larger scale, resulting in much lower prices and more variety the the previous “imported” cereals. Now if I could just find some untatined milk to go with this………..
Nanjing Ikea and Ikea Bistro
Sep 8th
Feeling like my apartment was seriously devoid of crappy particle board furniture, I headed out to do some shopping at Ikea today. I’ve never felt the need to visit an Ikea before, but as I was out of ideas for new work procrastination techniques, I decided to lose my Dutch owned Swedish home furnishing virginity.
The place opened weekend before last, but parts of the exterior seem to still be under construction (ex: the area designated for taxi drop offs and pick ups. So, if you get something large/heavy and don’t have a car, I’d opt for delivery or be prepared to drag it all around the area looking for a taxi).
Inside everything appears to have gotten finished on time. The top floor has display rooms and already constructed furniture that you can sit on and test out. The display rooms are set up to look like already finished kitchens, bedrooms, offices, etc. Some of them were pretty sweet, but it just made me realize how crappy my apartment is (and really, it isn’t even that crappy compared to other Nanjing apartments). Especially the cherry wood kitchen with breakfast bar, automatic dishwasher, stainless steel refrigerator, matching built in oven and microwave, etc. If my kitchen looked like that I’d get a sleeping bag and never leave it.
Besides my dream Nanjing kitchen, there is also a restaurant on the top floor that serves Swedish meatballs, salmon, spaghetti and the like, but there seemed to be about 48% of Nanjing’s population fighting to the counter, and another 48% staking out tables (the remaining 4% of the population presumably had jobs and were working this fine Monday). So I made a quick mental note to come back for cafeteria style Swedish grub at a later date.
Downstairs is where it gets serious; this is set up more like a traditional store with all the goods that made up the showrooms upstairs. I particularly liked the kitchen accessories. If you own an oven, this is the best place to get ovenware I’ve found in Nanjing. Also decent sauté pans can be found here, nice and thick bottomed to distribute heat evenly; all the more important if cooking on a Chinese flamethrower, err gas range, where the only flame settings are “High” and “Ridiculously High”.
After jamming your cart full with the 1 or 2 items you needed and the 98 things you didn’t, you head to the checkout. No free bags here, but paper bags can be had for 1.5 RMB, and cloth ones for 4 RMB or so. Checkout is followed by Ikea Food and Ikea Bistro. Ikea Food is a pretty disappointingly small selection of Swedish food. Lots of candies, some salmon and a few other odds and ends. Got some coffee, but nothing else enticed me that much. Ikea Bistro is a sort of snack bar. They have Hot dogs (sausages, weiner schnitzel, disgusting collection of leftover animal byproducts, whatever you want to call them), assorted drinks and ice cream. Having skipped the Swedish meatballs, I went for a hot dog and a Pepsi, crazy affordable at 5 RMB total. 3 RMB for the Pepsi (with free refills, though no ice) and 2 RMB for the hot dog. The hot dog was pretty good, and didn’t have that sweet taste of Chinese “Taiwan Style” Hot Dogs. Didn’t try the ice cream but looked pretty good, and also affordable at 1 RMB.
I could go and tell you more of what they sell and some pricing, along with location etc. but Ikea has made something rarely seen in China retail and restaurants, they call it a “website” and on this “website” they put information about their store and what they sell, including *gasp* prices! Maybe one day someone will figure out how you can buy stuff on one of these “websites” and have it delivered to your home or office. That would be amazing, as long as they bring the hotdogs too.
http://www.ikea.com/cn/en/store/nanjing