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There are several places every newcomer to Shanghai has to know. One of this places is Avocado lady's shop (also known as Arugula lady and Basil lady). I got to know about Ms Jiang Qin from the first issue of Time Out Shanghai and since then grocery shopping has never been the same again. Her shop at 274 Wulumuqi Rd is one of the only places in the city to buy cheap, fresh avocados (10 RMB), a rare find. Her store looks like nothing special from the outside, but the good import foods at incredibly low prices have made this woman famous.
Ms Jiang is a real entrepreneur and a smart cookie because she knows her laowai market very well. She has all those products that the other vegetable sellers don’t, such as fresh arugula, basil, frisée, blocks of parmesan, and balls of fresh mozzarella for only 17 RMB.
Being Shanghainese she also knows all the names for veggies, fruits and fish in English. If you can't find a certain product at her shop you can either point it in her Chinese-English foods vocabulary with pictures or bring her the packaging of this product and she will get it for you. I don't know where she gets her stuff but she can basically source anything and at the prices WAY cheaper than any grocery store and overall better quality.
Ask for basil and she pulls out a many-kilo bag of the fresh stuff, followed by a string of questions, mostly in English: Pine nuts? (She has two types) Almonds? Mint? Frozen Norwegian smoked salmon? (50 RMB per jin) Chicken breasts? (Frozen, 10 RMB per jin) Anchovies? (Tinned, 12 RMB a pop) Frozen tuna? (50 RMB per jin) Feta? (29 RMB per 200gr) Cottage Cheese? Sour Cream? Gauda? Camambert? Black olives? (16 RMB per 170gr). She's got red wine vinegar and canned chickpeas and shallots, too.
Even though her shop's location is far from my home and office, I choose some time during a week to stock up with imported foods and fresh vegies. I'm a fan!
Comments
which is the next cross street to Ms Jiang Qin's shop?
Also, for those of you in the area, at the back, in the right corner of the wet market on Wukang lu (between Wuyuan lu and Anfu lu) there is a stall that has only beef - and not in little pieces or sliced or ground - but big chunks of it... so hygiene is a little lacking as per usual (the guy picked it up with his bare hands and used a knife that was laying around to cut it) but I bought 1jin (500g) of super lean beef - no idea what the cut was but the meat had no fat and was incredibly tender and all the meat in his stall looked incredibly fresh - nice and red, no hint of grey or of anything other than fresh meat - for 25RMB - cut it myself into 3 2"x1"x6" pieces which were perfect for searing - to lock in the flavours and kill anything that might have hitched a ride - and then to eat blue as I like it :-) It was phenomenal! :-)