Arz Fine Foods

I first heard about Arz Fine Foods on the TV Show "Street Eats", which hilights a different cuisine each week; Arz Fine Foods was on their Lebanese episode. They focused mainly on their bakery, and their tasty baklava and mamoul. Doing a little googling, I realized that their store was quite close to my place of work, I could go a little out of my way to drop by after work. Located at 1909 Lawrence Street East (east of Pharmancy). My first attempt to find the store failed, I thought it was on Ellesmere, so I was happy to find it the second time. The store is standalone, with parking at the side and back.

This is a fairly large store, with a quite large section for fruits and vegetables just within. Next to this are sections for meats, cheeses and prepared goods, dairy products, frozen goods, dried and packaged goods, and a quite large bakery. I was struck as to how clean the store is.

Arz sells its own freshly baked pitas, both in whole wheat and white. Quite good.

The falafels they sell are quite tasty.

To go with the falafels, have some hummous. Quite tasty.

The tabbouleh I found to be very soggy, and not quite so tasty.

These grape leaves are stuffed with vegetables, you can also get ones with beef. Tasty, but quite lemony.

This is a stuffed zucchini, with vegetables, you can also get ones with beef.

The baklava are quite delicious, made with walnuts or cashews or pistachios. Yum!

Even better were the mamoul. These were also made with either walnut, pistachio or date. The pistachio and date (the most traditional) were my favourite.

The Apple Market

You could be forgiven for passing by this unimposing store, you also could be forgiven for thinking this store only sells apples (no, not Apples, as in Apple computers, rather, the fruit). Located at the corner of Queensway and Camilla Road, a couple stoplights west of Hurontario, I've driven by it a few times before we decided finally to make that turn south and into the parking lot. This used to be a 15-acre farm, specializing in apples, onions, carrots, tomatoes, and rhubarb, eventually a small store was opened to sell seasonal fruit, there was a garden centre as well. Over the years, this evolved to include fresh-baked goods, unique groceries (with a fair number of them Organic or healthy), a full-service meat counter, and, so you're thinking now this is a big store, it also includes a health and wellness section (and they stock some of the health products that I had to go downtown for!). There is also a Health and Wellness fair every September. Going up to the main entrance, we noticed people go into a shed, looking like it was sunk into the ground, and other people coming out holding big baskets of apples. Another thing I like about this store, is an emphasis on local, Ontario, produce (though there are lots of produce I see that you find in any supermarket); I would like to see more emphasis on local products, but perhaps that's just because we haven't got much produce yet from within Ontario. The staff is friendly, it's a family-owned and run business, the prices are fairly reasonable; all good reasons to check this store out!

Ethnic Food Source - Vientiane Supermarket

My beautiful Bride's brother showed us this store on Weston Rd., on Bradstock Rd. north of Sheppard Ave. (on the right side as you are going north on Weston Rd., in an older strip mall next to a Latin restaurant). The owners are from Laos (Vientiane is the capitol city of Laos), which is next to Thailand, and thus they have a lot of products from Thailand (it seems far more than from Laos), including fresh vegetables and frozen goods. We've found holy basil, krachai and kaffir limes for sale there, as well as lots of interesting frozen Thai products. Too, they have Thai recipe books, magazines, snacks, rice, noodles, lots of bottled vegetables and sauces, and a fair amount of Latin foods (for the clientele in the area).

Golden Hearth Baking

I discovered this bakery, located kitty-corner across the road from the Farmer's Market in Kitchener, in my Internet Travels, it is called Golden Hearth Baking. Being in town one afternoon, we thought we'd check it out.

This is a small location, with ovens in the back, and when we arrived I think most of their baked goods were already gone, at least their breads, we arrived about 1 in the afternoon, though they offer their breads for sale in a number of locations in Kitchener and Waterloo, check their website above to find a location near you. There were a number of other healthy products for sale as well, one thing we did purchase here was the hummus that I wrote about before. Too bad that they didn't have much bread for sale, I would have liked to try some, but we did pick some sweet baked goods to sample.

This is a dark chocolate with walnuts square that we bought, it tasted great.

This is an almond biscotti that we bought, it tasted good, but not as good as the dark chocolate walnut square.

Yong Feng Supermarket

On the way home from our meal at the Chinese Vegetarian restaurant, we stopped at a supermarket called Yong Feng. The address is 1925 Sheppard Ave., it is right on the corner of Finch Ave. The reason for us going there, is that there are lots of different products available that come from Thailand, my beautiful Thai Bride's brother recommended it. We did find lots of interesting things, and even bought some, frozen banana cake, a frozen Thai dessert with coconut, chopped lemongrass. The prices were fairly good, in line with a lot of the Chinese supermarkets, which seem to sell things at cheaper prices than big chain Western supermarkets (though Asian products mostly).

ChocoTelegram

I discovered this unique service, based in Toronto on 1210 Eglinton Avenue West, called

ChocoTelegram, they can send almost any message, holiday or event-themed, or personalized up to 60 characters, in Belgian chocolate blocks. They even provide suitable packaging for warm weather shipping, and discounts for bulk orders. The chocolate, however, looks to be only milk chocolate, it would be nice to have a darker version available.

Mississauga T&T Chinese Supermarket

I drove by on Thursday, and noticed it was finally open! It looks like they are already having parking problems, too many people coming, though perhaps they have Grand Opening specials that are attracting the people.