In search of the bread aisle

There are plenty of small scale local supermarkets around the neighbourhood. Stepping inside is however a little different to Foodtown in Greenlane. This evening I embarked on a quest to find a large size scotch brite pad. Newcomers to my local Wellcome supermarket may find themselves embarked on an even tougher quest - to find the bread aisle.

Along the way I snapped a few pictures for your perusal. Unfortunately I didn't get a good shot of the entrance. Better lighting would show that the parking lot consists of a row of about eight scooters on the footpath.

Grocery shopping is not a disabled friendly exercise, and tends to focus the mind on what you really need. What goes home must come up the entrance stairs again, generally by hand (unless you've learned to balance pineapples on your head. I haven't).



Here we are in the vege aisle, which consists largely of many asian greens, 7 mushroom varietals, and small quantities of things needed in a stirfry. A quirky thing you may notice is that often floating about in your bowl of soup when eating out is the presence of shredded lettuce.

In the seafood section, the fish come whole rather than filleted, and are accompanied by a range of squid, whitebait, prawns, sardines, sprats, octopus, and fishballs. Aside from a lack of scallops (and dubious use-by dates) the selection is pretty good.

Next door in the meat section, there are very few joints, roasts and packages of mince. Costco has a much better selection of cuts. Instead, meat mostly comes chopped for stir fries, in small bony pieces for fatty sweet sauced dishes, or sliced for shabu shabu (hotpot).

While searching for the bread, you will come across the noodle aisle, which stretches down the length of this photo. I love the range of noodles here in Taiwan. These packages range from your basic 2 minute varietal to monster bowls with 4 different seasoning packets and a foil pouch of marinaded meat.

Nearby is the complemetary soya sauce and fish sauce section.


In the dairy department, it is very common to find snack size samples of other beverages packaged in with the bottles of milk. Today for example on this shelf with 2 litres bottles are cardboard drinking cartons of chocolate-flavoured and "pudding"-flavoured milk.

Down the cold aisle is the large iced tea section. My favourite iced teas come in grapefruit and muscat grape flavours. Hen hao chi! Those red and yellow signs advertise current discount specials.

In the freezer section, at least half if not more of the space is devoted to dumplings, steamed buns and fish balls. Pork steamed buns, if boring to some, are my favourite. I first had them in Singapore back in 1999 and it's been a quiet love affair since.

For those of you who were wondering about the bread aisle I mentioned earlier - here it is. All two half-shelves of it. Bread in Taiwan tends to be quite sweet.

The loaf on the bottom shelf, left hand side, is called "Milk Toast". It is generally the kind I buy, but the loaf is so tall that halfway through toasting I have to take the slices out and turn them upside down to make sure it's heated all the way around the slice.

The other shelves in this very small section have slightly asianised versions of other baked goods, such as swiss rolls and nut clusters.

As a final note - my quest for the scotch brite pad was successful. All's well that ends well.