| The food press has been swooning over Costco recently.
In this month's Saveur, there's a big feature on Costco's extensive wine department, while Food & Wine has a long list of gourmet items you can find amid the jumbo packs of diapers and mountains of tires. (Best among these, by the way, are dried porcini mushrooms, which are $17 at Costco and $80 everywhere else.)
But rather than struggling with the crowds and arriving home with 48 pounds of Nabob coffee, I find myself driving east into Bonnybrook to the Dutch Cash and Carry.
The Dutch Cash and Carry is in a long, skinny room, packed with food – it's not much to look at, but all sorts of good stuff is heaped high. There's great Dutch candy you can't get anywhere else, like intense double salted licorice ($1.50 for a small bag), addictive sour fruits and marzipan potatoes, which are little balls of almond heaven that look like mini tubers (only in cold Northern European countries would the potato be a model for a sweet).
Then there's the chocolate – this place is the cheap chocolate lover's paradise. Intense and concentrated hazelnut spread (kind of a super-Nutella) can cure the worst mood. Little chocolate sprinkles, which (apparently) are for showering on white bread, make for the most unhealthy breakfast known to humanity. Best of all, Verkade-brand chocolate bars priced at a discount aren't a lot more expensive than your average Three Musketeers, but they're so much better. If you don't have the dough for a Callebaut, DaVinci or Olivier's fix, the Dutch Cash and Carry will get the monkey off your back.
Another highlight is the cheese. Against one wall is a fridge filled with cheese at some of the best prices in town. Medium gouda is the house cheese chez Pittman, and it's $1.39/100 grams for the real deal – top-quality, fresh and Dutch. There's sausage, too, and for under $1/100 grams, it's as good a deal as Costco, without the screaming irritation factor.
There are also dry goods, including every Conimex product made (essential for cooking up an Indonesian feast) as well as clogs, books, etc. – you could spend an hour in this little room just looking at stuff.
The location is totally crazy. It's near the ADM Mill you can see from the Crossroads Market, close to a bunch of abandoned warehouses, and I'm not sure that the street it's on is even paved. But on a recent Saturday, there were at least 10 cars in front, many with Dutch flags on the bumper. The easiest way to find the Dutch Cash and Carry (3815 16th St. S.E., phone 290-1838) is to drive east on Ogden Road from Blackfoot Trail, turn left on 38th Ave. S.E., and left on 16th St. It's open Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
NEW PRODUCTS AROUND TOWN
· The Ceres people are now producing litchi juice – an open challenge to all Calgary bartenders to produce a dynamite cocktail with this fragrant stuff. Cosmopolitans be damned – what I want is a litchi-tini. Speaking of litchis (also spelled lychees), a bag of fresh ones is less than $3 at the Shun Fat International Supermarket. They make an excellent after-dinner fruit, and are good with a slice of the above-mentioned gouda. All you do is break the skin, squeeze out the pit and drop it in your mouth.
· The Cookbook Co. Cooks has buckets of fantastic organic cookie dough made by Baker Creek Natural Foods. Each bucket makes 30 to 45 cookies ($12.95 to $13.95), and you can choose from gluten-free shortbread, chocolate chunk, and white chocolate macadamia nut. This decadent stuff tastes homemade, is local (Canmore) and offers a great shortcut to making your own. |
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