Fruit and veg shops

1finny said:
I share your love of Fennel - JS, Co-op larger stores, Waitrose and Morrisons.
Mind you - demographics play a part in ranging so it will depend on where you live.
Fresh peas - JS and prob Morrisons.
Controversial, I know but ….. you won’t get fresher than frozen peas 🫛
You don’t get the fun of podding them tho
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There are none of your named supermarkets where we are, it's very much about geography.
 
Corcaigh_the_Cat said:
The problem with many supermarkets where fruit and veg is concerned is a lack of choice. Fresh peas for instance, as described in the OP.

Fennel is another veg I use regularly that I can't find in the local supermarkets.

Most of the veg we eat comes from Lidl, it has the best produce locally for us. I guess it depends where you are.
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Back in the early days of COVID when we had to queue to get into the supermarket and everyone was scared that the food was going to run out, the only veg you could get was fennel and celeriac as no b***r knew how to cook it.

There are **** tons of fruit and veg shops in London. They are all run by Cypriots/Iranians/Turks/eastern european etc who all have a far better food culture than ours. Some of them are amazing. One down the road from my old flat did incredible bread that people would come from all over north London to buy. The olives they sell knock the socks off the rubbish the supermarket sells.

Most of them import veg from all around Europe, and I prefer to buy British so I tend to go to the supermarket instead. Quality varies. Sometimes better than supermarket, sometimes worse. They do tend to have a much wider variety due to catering for minorities. I've got fresh borlotti beans, sweet lemons, green tomatoes all sorts from these places. The legendary Yasser halim sells mental stuff like calves brains too.
 
1finny said:
Love the generalisations on here
Let’s start with supermarkets - Waitrose, M+S, C0-op all committed to British where possible and work with brilliant suppliers. Morrisons have their own farms too.

Farm shops and freshness…. Errr mostly not as fresh as supermakets unless grown on site. You can get good British produce but there are loads of cowboys and giirls out there stocking all sorts of stuff and claiming ’British.

Price - if you are getting it cheaper from a farm shop than a supermarket you ought to be on watch.

Similar theme -‘local butchers’
Few years ago my business supported a local community who loved their local butcher. They were keen to keep locally sourced meat and urged us to take the business on as a going concern and put it in a small supermarket we had.
We were up for it and did it - we like doing that kind of thing.

Once we got into the detail we realised he was a con man. All sorts of stuff coming in from Eastern Europe which he was passing off as local.

He, of course, was a pillar of the community and we were in too deep. So, we went ahead and over a period of 12 months made it as local as could be.

In summary - quality fruit, veg and local meat will cost you.

There are as many problems with the independents as there are with supermarkets.
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Great post
 
Mickey_2003 said:
Are there any fruit and veg shops kicking about in Boro these days? Not the fruit and veg sections in supermarkets, they are crap.

I have a hankering for some sweet peas in pods.

Found some in Asda a few weeks ago, so I got a bag. Delicious. Have since bought another 3 bags, but they’ve all been disappointing and tasteless.

Any hidden gems out there?
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See yer mam, she's growing some. Be quick as they seem to be disappearing ;) :cool:
 
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