C-Town is a Tardis of a place - decidedly poky-looking from outside, it turns out to have an upstairs section selling art supplies, slippers, kitchen goods, televisions ... pretty much everything except actual furniture and kitchen sinks. Downstairs are all the groceries. It's not laid out like a New Zealand supermarket - the first section is rice and cooking oil, then the bakery and international food section (mostly instant noodles), then aisles of cleaning supplies and toiletries, and finally the rest of the food, with the fruit and vegetables tucked away in the back corner. There are plenty of familiar brands here and in all the other supermarkets - lots and lots of Nestle products, Maggi sachets, Danone yoghurts and Barilla pasta - and of course plenty of unfamiliar ones.
Here's what I bought on Tuesday (this lot from Carrefour):
One packet of biscuits filled with Turkish delight (made in Jordan), three tetra packs of feta (made in Egypt), a very nasty can of sparkling apple drink, five mystery mini savouries, two local flatbreads (quite like naan bread), three mini cucumbers, two tomatoes, one red capsicum, some makdous (pickled eggplants stuffed with walnuts) and a piece of boneless lamb (cut unidentified). To get the last two items I had to interact with the deli and butchery staff, so I am quite proud of myself. Total cost JOD 7.4, approx NZD 15. Most of the dairy products here boast how much fat is in them; the feta cheese above is made "with natural butter".
And here's yesterday's lot, from C-Town:
A litre of fresh milk, a litre of juice, a sachet of chicken stock, an eggplant and yoghurt dip, a kilo of small flatbreads (no, we don't need a kilo of them, but that's the size bundle they are sold in), a couple of eggplants, a couple of courgettes, a lettuce and four imported plums, all for JOD 4.90.
(Why yes, we do seem to be eating a lot of eggplant.)
For staples, local vegetables and fruit are cheap, about NZD 1.30 a kilo for courgettes and cucumbers, 2.00 a kilo for eggplants, 60 cents a kilo for cucumbers. (Even lettuce and cauliflower are sold by weight here.) Chicken is a bit cheaper than NZ, and lamb quite a lot cheaper. Fresh milk is comparable to Anchor prices rather than Dairy Vale. Some kinds of bread are subsidised by the government and are very cheap - about 50 cents a kilo for the small flatbreads above. (There have been mutterings of discontent in the local paper about how non-Jordanians make up 35% of the population but buy 40% of the subsidised bread, and also about how much of the subsidised bread winds up being thrown away ... perhaps if they sold it in smaller bundles there would be less thrown away but I guess I am not in charge here.)
Most of the products in the supermarkets do have English labels on them as well as Arabic, though often the English is fairly well concealed. There are far more bottles of stuff that looks like milk and turns out to be yoghurt of some sort than there are bottles of milk (the locals seem to mostly buy UHT milk), so I am very grateful for the labels, however small they may be. Fizzy salty yoghurt drink would not have the right effect in my coffee at all.
Buying meat is interesting - there are packages of chicken breast (with bones in - I'd forgotten that was even possible), chicken legs etc ready to go, and sometimes cuts of imported beef, but for everything else you have to ask at the butchery counter, where they usually cut the piece the customer wants from a whole carcass. Unless the customer is a wimp like me who just asks for a random piece of lamb from the small pile of "boneless lamb" pieces already cut up.
Dates are huge here (as a product, I mean, not individually). There are date stands in the supermarkets, and even whole shops selling nothing but dates.
And honey is big too:
What there doesn't seem to be is crackers. Shelves and shelves of interesting local and imported cheeses, but no crackers to put them on. Also no Vegemite, though I was pretty much prepared for that - Safeways almost certainly has English Marmite but that's almost a worse culture shock than simply going without.
excellent, I love to see what other places have in supermarkets, always something interesting. Do they do grades or other indications of being checked by anyone?
ReplyDeleteYou could toast your flat bread to make a cracker substitute perhaps?
I haven't seen any sign of official checks or ratings, though my ability to read the sign is a bit limited. Pretty much all the food handling staff in supermarkets and cafes etc wear plastic gloves (I don't know how often they change them), though I was not super impressed when the butcher plonked my piece of lamb directly onto the scale.
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