8
votes
Where's the sauce?
So, I was looking for soy sauce the other day and my grocery store has created a whole new "ethnic" section. This section was near the entrance so I went there first to look for the soy sauce. It wasn't there. It was with the other condiments like BBQ sauce. Cool. Then I wanted oyster sauce and that wasn't near the soy and BBQ sauce, but back in the ethnic section...
So just wondering, where do you expect to find this sort of thing - ethnic and ethnic that's considered mainstream? (I also found tea in like five different places...)
It really depends where the store is. There's market research going on about the general vicinity all the time.
The grocery store to my east is considered "bougie". It's situated in the first floor of a fancy condo, surrounded by other fancy condos, located right in the heart of downtown. It has a lot of smaller sizes of the fancy brand names, but not a big selection of them. There's barely an "ethnic" selection to speak of, most of the offerings amount to a small selection of stereotypical food.
The other store on the other side of the train tracks, that has a much wider selection. It's surrounded by restaurants and nightlife, and older housing, in a neighbourhood that has been considered "cool" for 20+ years. It has a ton of food, but one big ethnic aisle. You can find many popular kinds of "ethnic" ingredients there—that is to say, they're all imported from other, much smaller countries. Things like Grace brand sauces can be found here, but you can even get some rice imported from India, and things like rose syrup sauces, or Mexico-sourced peppers. It makes sense, they cater to the foreign ingredients used by the restaurants around.
The new grocery store near me, that's in an area with a lot of residents with a wide multicultural background. There's no ethnic section here—the entire store is filled with "ethnic" food, sitting alongside the regular Western brands side-by-side. Food from all around the world, of all different kinds. Things you may not have ever imagined there would be, like something called "peanut punch" served in a child's juice box. It's basically potable peanut butter, it's great. You can find special imported frozen goods from all kinds of countries in the freezer section here. This isn't a small, mom and pop grocery store either, this is one of the big guys.
That last store has another location, a bit of a hike away from me. They have a completely different, and more traditional selection there since the area that store is in is more predominantly older residents, and a mostly white neighbourhood. It still offers a big selection of the traditional "ethnic" section.
In fact, all these grocery stores are the big brands. There are two main companies where I live, so they're split between the two. They'll vastly change not only the offerings available in each store, but also how they're distributed and laid out. There's a ton of demographic analysis that goes into every single facet of how these stores are built, laid out, and run.
As for why you'll find oyster sauce in one aisle and soy sauce in another... well, that's up to whomever designs the stock listings at the head office.
I'm honestly a little envious of how much choice you have :p.
When I go to the supermarket for anything distinctly not-traditional Western-standard fare, I always look in the ethnic aisles first. If the market carries it at all, it's probably there, and often I've noticed that sometimes the store will sell the same item in multiple places with different prices. The ethnic aisle is usually the cheaper price, if so.
Tea specifically, I usually just go to the the same aisle coffee is sold at. Though I prefer buying loose-leaf at an alternative location.
I use to go straight to the ethnic section too, but over the years my area has become really diverse and a lot of food has been added one or two at a time by category. So I got use to looking for sauce in the condiments aisle and such.
I'm with you on tea. I usually get loose left from a small shop out of town, but life's been busy lately and j haven't been able to make the hour and a half trip out...I miss proper tea.
This annoys me a lot. Are Egg Noodles in the Kosher section? The German section? Or the Noodle section? All the hot sauces are in one area, except for Sriracha...
I remember looking for tapioca flour that's apparently considered a spice... I've been substituting for a while before a friend insisted the store sold it and I ended up having two employees looking to find it for me. So annoying!
E: wording for clarity
It totally depends on where you are and what the local grocery stores call "ethnic". I'm in South Florida, and the local Publix chain has entire aisles devoted to Latin American, Caribbean, and kosher specialties.
But if I want Asian ingredients more sophisticated than La Choy, it's off to the enormous Chinese or Korean supermarkets, or the small Indian/Pakistani/Syrian/Haitian family grocers. There's also a global supermarket not too far away, which has fresh produce and aisles for every national cuisine you can think of.
It's a privilege to have this vast variety of imported foods available, but I'm moving to a remote Midwestern city, where a pricy gourmet store or Amazon will have to suffice. At least I know what brands to look for, based on the selections available here.
It really is! My neighborhood is full of Asians, so all the ethnic food was previously just scattered around the store. This was over the last ten years or so. Before that, you had to go to Chinatown for good soy sauce. Honestly, I'm really glad for the selection. They did add a lot more variety when they added the new aisle, so it's still a nice change.