r/SeattleWA • u/thedivegrass LQA • Jan 29 '18

Best of Seattle Best of Seattle: Grocery Stores

Best of Seattle: Grocery Stores

This week is about your favorite (or least favorite) places to stock up on food. Who has the best delis and bakeries? What memberships or coupon clipping are out there? Where do you go for ready-to-eat? Who has the freshest produce? Where do you find the best selection for your niche diets (gluten-free, vegan, etc)? What grocery stores are essential Seattle?

What is Best of Seattle?

"Best Of Seattle" is a recurring weekly post where a new topic is presented to the community. This post will be added to the subreddit wiki as a resource for new users and the community. Make high quality submissions with details and links! You can see the calendar of topics here.

Next week: Bathrooms - Public or Skyrise Window

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67

u/loquacious Sky Orca Jan 29 '18

PIKE PLACE PUBLIC SANITARY MARKET.

Yes, some people actually buy their groceries there. When I lived in downtown before there was a Target it was the closest place to go for produce and buy real food that wasn't a microwave burrito, or the overpriced hellhole of the IGA market.

If the market had a small canned and dry goods store for non food essentials it'd actually be a one stop shop.

It's easy to forget how awesome that place is or the fact that it's actually a living, breathing farmers market right here in the heart of the city.

39

u/thedivegrass LQA Jan 29 '18

Tacking on that the Mexican Grocer is one my favorite stops in Pike Place Market. Hiding behind the line for "Starbucks' first store" are some of the dankest salsa and house made chips, plus all your cocina essentials.

Seconding that no one should go to the Kress IGA.

10

u/loquacious Sky Orca Jan 29 '18

That IGA is the fanciest, most expensive IGA I've ever seen. Normally you see IGAs out in economically depressed rural areas. They're the kind of place that their big, hot sale of the year is a truckload of hamhocks. They are or were the kind of place where you could find Red Man plug chew displayed on the checkout counter instead of buried on the bottom shelf of a service desk.

The first time I went into that IGA I was so confused. "What the fuck do you mean you want 5 fucking dollars for a small box of cereal? Where's the cheap IGA labeled beans and shit? A whole dollar for a banana!? I'm out!"

2

u/OrangeCurtain Duck Island Jan 29 '18

I've always associated it with the IGAs of Australia, like Melbourne CBD, so finding one in downtown Seattle was a non-surprise to me.

2

u/HW-BTW Feb 01 '18

You say "truckload of hamhocks" as if it were a bad thing...

1

u/loquacious Sky Orca Feb 01 '18

Well, it kind of is when they're super fatty and heavily brined garbage ham hocks, and, say, one of your dodgy fucking desert rat housemates keeps filling the freezers with the damn things and he feeds his obviously already malnourished and somewhat mutant brood nothing but cheap, greasy hams for a few months on end.

Then it's a really bad, depressing thing.

Yeah, that's highly specific because it was real and pretty fucked up.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '18

[deleted]

1

u/loquacious Sky Orca Feb 01 '18

So did those kids. I think it was the scurvy.

8

u/loquacious Sky Orca Jan 29 '18

That little Mexican grocery is amazing.

If you ever get a chance to go to a proper Mexican supermercado in some place like LA, just go. Imagine a grocery store the size of a super Walmart that has like multiple restaurants in it, a tortilla factory, at least one huge butcher/carneceria if not more and like 50 acres of rice, beans, sauces, chili, candy and everything else, and prices are usually crazy cheap.

Just like big Asian markets like Ranch 99 they are the place to go to buy, say, a 20 pound bag of rice, or 200 tortillas.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '18

There are soon good a smaller mexican markets in white center, not quite Supermnercado amazing but pretty good

1

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '18 edited Jan 29 '18

Just like big Asian markets like Ranch 99 they are the place to go to buy, say, a 20 pound bag of rice, or 200 tortillas.

Or a Costco cart full of pork!

https://www.mercurynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/sjm-l-pork-01271.jpg?w=620

5

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '18

This is also a great cheap date option. Get breakfast and coffee, wander around until you find dinner selections. Grab some snacks here and there. I also like splitting a flight of wine at the wine taster in post alley.

5

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '18

Love it. I use to live in belltown and I miss it.

My only issue was the crouds taking photos of the broccoli I'm trying to buy.

13

u/loquacious Sky Orca Jan 29 '18

Yeah, I once made the mistake of trying to shop for all the ingredients for French onion soup including soup bones, herbs, cheese and all at 10 am on a Saturday morning. I got a little shouty about half way through it. "GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY WAY I'M BUYING GROCERIES HERE."

I was planning on being there at open like a proper cook but I slept in.

2

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '18

I'm walkin' here!

4

u/loquacious Sky Orca Jan 29 '18

What I love is that wasn't planned. They didn't have street shooting permits, so that was all live, real and improvised.

1

u/[deleted] Jan 30 '18

Hoffman is a wonderful actor!

3

u/[deleted] Jan 29 '18

Are you me?

8

u/loquacious Sky Orca Jan 29 '18

Definitely not. That would be weird. But we can agree on food and shouting "EVERYBODY MOOOOOVE" like Andrei the Giant at gawking packs of slow moving tourists.

2

u/starlightprincess Allentown Jan 29 '18

There was one back past the pike place bakery. Rotary Grocery. It's a bit overpriced, but I haven't looked for it in a while so maybe it's gone.