The quality of tomatoes in London supermarkets have always disappointed me compared with the quality in Italy. The vine ripened organic tomatoes are an improvement but not alot of flavor. I put this down to living in a big city and the convenience of supermarkets.
As I have travelled east from London, the fresh produce markets have increased in numbers, where they are common place on the side of every major road or town, especially in Bulgaria. The stalls are small and many, selling local grown produce. The supermarkets in small towns do not sell fresh produce therefore you shop in multiple places - this what Mum did when I was growing up.
I dropped into a new massive Metro (8 times the size of Clapham Sainsbury or Sandy Safeway) to get coffee and Muesli. Needing help with understanding coffee quality, I ended up spending half an hour discussing and taste testing tomatoes with the English speaking Manager.
The new Metro store is the first of the new format in Bulgaria, which focuses on quality of produce, from Italian coffee, live fish in tanks, and tomatos from a single producer. Families come weekly to buy all their food for the week.
This has left me thinking, What will happen to the small producing farmers as countries adopt western supermarkets??
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment