Why travellers are obsessed with foreign supermarkets

It's freaking fun! That's basically it.

What's common and everyday in one place is exotic in another.

It lets you get something that's just plain fun, for little money and it feels like a shared experience with the locals.

They don't usually appreciate what they have, but it's a great way to rethink your own culture's assumptions.

I don't travel abroad as much as I'd like, but I always enjoy bringing back some foreign candies for friends. Some things we can get locally in upscale shops, and much you can get from Amazon, but most folks don't bother. I recently came back from Iceland and brought probably $20 in little candies. Lots of licorice-based stuff - that's apparently a big thing there. Just little fun bits to pass out to friends when I come back.

But I've always enjoyed poking through grocery stores traveling abroad - China, UK, Russia all were interesting in their own way. Seeing what's similar and what's different. Yeah, cool - they have Pringles too - but... wow... such weird flavors. I do remember seeing canned horse in a couple of Russian stores. And in one upscale Moscow grocery, they had a huge fridge case for 'cheeses from around the world'. Germany, Italy, France, UK... kept going... got to the 'US' portion and ... tubs of 'Philadelphia cream cheese'. I thought I'd taken a pic of that but sadly can't find it any more. I really thought it was a joke.

Given that almost everything is a subsidiary of Unilever, the 'I wonder what they'll have' question has faded. But finding local flavors of things is still fun. Greece is likely my next bucket list trip. Any suggestions on foods to try or candies to look for - let me know! :)

My favorite thing when travelling across Europe is visiting local Lidl and comparing it to my own home Lidl. There is always something slightly different, but the base is most often the same.

For example in Belgrade they didn't have kaiser rolls in Lidl. That's a first for me.

I thought I was the only one!

I was surprised when I went for an extended visit to Colombia - outside of beef cuts (an entire rack of ribs, bit butcher cuts, not a single steak or a dozen hamburger patties) frozen foods are virtually non-existant. If you wander into any American supermarket or costco roughly 20% of the floor space is reserved for frozen foods. Something as ubiquitous as the bachelor frozen pizza just doesn't exist in their super markets, despite being the same size and ~roughly the same dry goods/shelf goods.

It's one of my favorite activities in a foreign country! Even more fun if you go shop with a local.

Yeah, local supermarkets and bookstores are always great places to try. Experiencing local prepackaged foods with different standards of bare minimums than yours and flipping magazines for topics you're familiar in unfamiliar language and formats is not an easy moment to replicate at home.

> It's 10:00 in a Tokyo 7-Eleven, ... , katsu curry buns, ...

nitpick: "katsu curry" means katsu plus curry. katsu means Japanese localized cutlet fries. curry means curry. there are katsu sandwitches and curry buns in 7-11 JP, but no katsu && curry bun in 7-11 JP. Calling curry buns katsu curry buns is same as referring to french fries as fish and chips with emphasis on FISH when there isn't in the bag; it would be a false advertisement if a restaurant had done it. The author need to make up their mind and call it Japanese curry, or if their style guide prohibits it, just curry without indicating what type of it is, or, Japanese curry is not supposed to be much different from the Royal Navy recipe anyway, so you could call it the Navy style, that's probably fine too.

Food culture is a marvelous bridge and gateway for anyone to explore foreign cultures. It can be very accessible at first and lead into more exotic discoveries.

In the USA, it is very easy to find large pan-Asian-themed grocery stores. I could find about three very close by; a Filipino one just opened a few weeks ago here. It is very strange, though: there are no large-scale European grocery stores in the USA, that I know of. If you want Euro-goods, the source is very often a small family-run deli or boutique shop, and the same goes for British/UK groceries. It may be an accident of history and geography.

I traveled to Catalonia by way of London. In England I had no time at all to visit grocery stores. In Catalonia I saw them a few times. Carrefour was reminiscent of a large Target, basically. Of course a store selling groceries is not unfamiliar to anyone, but it was so overwhelming sometimes. I've mentioned a few times about the olive aisle. The national pride and diversity of varieties were simply amazing. I also experienced this at an Italian restaurant, where the complimentary appetizer was 3 types of olives, all very exciting.

When I first arrived in Catalonia, a friend served me a sandwich in her café, and said with gravitas, "it is jamón!" and I nodded. My high school Spanish said that "jamón" means ham. No big deal, she served me a ham sandwich?

By the time we arrived in the Carrefour, I began to realize that jamón was also a national dish and source of Catalonian pride. The legs were curing on display all over the store, suspended, sitting on shelves, you name it. Just ready to shave off a few slices. It wasn't until I arrived home and researched jamón and then tried to obtain it stateside when I realized what a treasure it really is.

I thought I was alone in doing that and the writer felt the said. I love going to markets in places i travel to and seeing the different types of snacks they have. Often times I do walk in for toothpaste but then wander all around the store.

Three pictures from Getty Images and generic copy. Was this assembled by an AI?

An instagrammer visiting a konbini in Kyoto would be far more interesting.

(If you want that experience in coastal California, visit a Nijiya Market.)

As a Dutch citizen the most important thing is walking around looking at the prices and see how cheap everything is.

Well there are a few insane places like Switzerland or Aruba.

The Russia example with canned fish is spot on. American supermarkets rarely have canned fish in tomato sauce but it's one of my favorite ways to eat it.