Not long ago I wrote about how difficult it was to find international goods at German supermarkets in the post Are German supermarkets culturally insensitive?
Since then, in an effort to recreate a culinary dish from 'home' that isn't really a thing in Berlin - fish and chips, we had to 'make do' with what was available...and make it ourselves. Recipe to follow in another post at a later date.
Now, fish and chips is a fried food situation; fried fish, fried chips - fish and chips. Without a fryer we used a saucepan to heat the oil and this all worked fine. The tricky thing was removing the chips one they were fried - no frying basket!
So, in a long winded way of getting around to the point, we needed a 'thing' to retrieve the chips from the hot oil as the pasta scooper and tongs just don't cut it. This led me to think that there is a utensil used in Chinese cooking, sometimes called a 'Chinese Spider', which would be perfect.
In the hunt for this utensil we went searching first in the local stores, like Mäc Geiz, Euro Shop and other kitchen stores - and this search resulted in nothing suitable, only bad compromises. HOW HARD IS IT TO GET THIS THING!?
The logical step then was to see if there were any Asian supermarkets in Berlin, and of course there are! A search of the best one in Berlin resulted in 'Go Asia' located in Turmstraße, Moabit. This is not particularly close to us, but we wanted to check it out and went cycling there in the rain.
Indeed, Go Asia is an excellent Asian supermarket. Quite large and with lots of noodles, rices, pastes and heaps of stuff we have no idea what to do with.
They even have some 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' knock off stuff!
And for those into the latest Afro-American hair products (why in the Asian store?), covered!
But what about the Chinese Spider? ...well mixed news on that one. They had one that was WAY too big, and WAY too expensive (20 Euros)...meant for a proper Asian restaurant kitchen with big woks. Not suitable for our little fish and chips.
The visit wasn't a total waste though as we picked up some green curry paste, some red curry paste and a couple of other things to try.
We also discovered another Asian supermarket directly under the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) at Alexanderplatz. Much smaller than Go Asia but stocking most of the same packaged items (and in some cases slightly cheaper).
Just like Go Asia, they only had the huge novelty sized Chinese Spider :(
I was starting to think that I was going to have to make my own Spider! However, we thought we would try one more place - another Asian Supermarket in our own Friedrichshain neighbour hood - Hoa Mai on Frankfurter Allee.
Similarly sized to the Alexanderplatz market we thought it was going to be history repeating.
BUT! not so, this place stocks quite a few different items (like motorcycle locks?!) and more utensils INCLUDING various sizes of Chinese Spiders!! WOO HOO! They had the big one, a small one, and one just a little bigger than the smallest one, the perfect size that we were after.
So what does this elusive thing look like...this:
This one cost 2.50 Euros. Not too bad we thought.
With out new Spider safely in the backpack we thought we really need to have fish and chips tonight. Unfortunately the Hoa Mai fish section seemed rather dubious (all fish frozen and looking very 'freezer burnt').
So we popped off to the nearby Aldi (at the Ring Center) and got our fish and the frozen chips. Success.
After all of this mucking around, I return back to the original question of 'Are German supermarkets culturally insensitive?' and this tour of Asian supermarkets got me thinking:
Maybe, the Germans just stick to what they know they are good at and let the specialists take over the deficits. Maybe doing something in a mediocre fashion (i.e. stocking an incomplete selection of Asian groceries) is more insensitive than just leaving it out all together (aside from the very basics)? Hmmm.
German has a word 'Feinkost', which roughly means; delicatessen, gourmet foods, fine foods and speciality foods. When the word is used, it is used as in 'I am going to the Feinkost' - 'I will buy specialist foods at the Feinkost'. So - if the word and such places exist, then why should the big supermarket chains tread on their market segment? Isn't it a classic 'corporate move' to put the little speciality guys out of business by offering their goods at prices the small stores can't compete with? Maybe we should appreciate that the lack of an all catering mega corporate supermarket lets the Feinkosts survive! :)
Now we are on the lookout for other nations Feinkosts!
Since then, in an effort to recreate a culinary dish from 'home' that isn't really a thing in Berlin - fish and chips, we had to 'make do' with what was available...and make it ourselves. Recipe to follow in another post at a later date.
Now, fish and chips is a fried food situation; fried fish, fried chips - fish and chips. Without a fryer we used a saucepan to heat the oil and this all worked fine. The tricky thing was removing the chips one they were fried - no frying basket!
So, in a long winded way of getting around to the point, we needed a 'thing' to retrieve the chips from the hot oil as the pasta scooper and tongs just don't cut it. This led me to think that there is a utensil used in Chinese cooking, sometimes called a 'Chinese Spider', which would be perfect.
In the hunt for this utensil we went searching first in the local stores, like Mäc Geiz, Euro Shop and other kitchen stores - and this search resulted in nothing suitable, only bad compromises. HOW HARD IS IT TO GET THIS THING!?
The logical step then was to see if there were any Asian supermarkets in Berlin, and of course there are! A search of the best one in Berlin resulted in 'Go Asia' located in Turmstraße, Moabit. This is not particularly close to us, but we wanted to check it out and went cycling there in the rain.
Indeed, Go Asia is an excellent Asian supermarket. Quite large and with lots of noodles, rices, pastes and heaps of stuff we have no idea what to do with.
They even have some 'Kentucky Fried Chicken' knock off stuff!
And for those into the latest Afro-American hair products (why in the Asian store?), covered!
But what about the Chinese Spider? ...well mixed news on that one. They had one that was WAY too big, and WAY too expensive (20 Euros)...meant for a proper Asian restaurant kitchen with big woks. Not suitable for our little fish and chips.
The visit wasn't a total waste though as we picked up some green curry paste, some red curry paste and a couple of other things to try.
We also discovered another Asian supermarket directly under the Fernsehturm (TV Tower) at Alexanderplatz. Much smaller than Go Asia but stocking most of the same packaged items (and in some cases slightly cheaper).
Just like Go Asia, they only had the huge novelty sized Chinese Spider :(
I was starting to think that I was going to have to make my own Spider! However, we thought we would try one more place - another Asian Supermarket in our own Friedrichshain neighbour hood - Hoa Mai on Frankfurter Allee.
Similarly sized to the Alexanderplatz market we thought it was going to be history repeating.
BUT! not so, this place stocks quite a few different items (like motorcycle locks?!) and more utensils INCLUDING various sizes of Chinese Spiders!! WOO HOO! They had the big one, a small one, and one just a little bigger than the smallest one, the perfect size that we were after.
So what does this elusive thing look like...this:
This one cost 2.50 Euros. Not too bad we thought.
With out new Spider safely in the backpack we thought we really need to have fish and chips tonight. Unfortunately the Hoa Mai fish section seemed rather dubious (all fish frozen and looking very 'freezer burnt').
So we popped off to the nearby Aldi (at the Ring Center) and got our fish and the frozen chips. Success.
After all of this mucking around, I return back to the original question of 'Are German supermarkets culturally insensitive?' and this tour of Asian supermarkets got me thinking:
Maybe, the Germans just stick to what they know they are good at and let the specialists take over the deficits. Maybe doing something in a mediocre fashion (i.e. stocking an incomplete selection of Asian groceries) is more insensitive than just leaving it out all together (aside from the very basics)? Hmmm.
German has a word 'Feinkost', which roughly means; delicatessen, gourmet foods, fine foods and speciality foods. When the word is used, it is used as in 'I am going to the Feinkost' - 'I will buy specialist foods at the Feinkost'. So - if the word and such places exist, then why should the big supermarket chains tread on their market segment? Isn't it a classic 'corporate move' to put the little speciality guys out of business by offering their goods at prices the small stores can't compete with? Maybe we should appreciate that the lack of an all catering mega corporate supermarket lets the Feinkosts survive! :)
Now we are on the lookout for other nations Feinkosts!
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