Food City Markets - Arizona

The Food City chain in Arizona targets the Hispanic market. It's a subsidiary of Basha's, which also owns the upscale AJ's markets. You will find any ingredient you need for Mexican cooking at Food City, and the prices are phenomenally low. Every Monday I check their website to find out what I'll be cooking that week.

How low are their prices? Some random "personal bests":

Garlic 50 cents a pound (comes to 11 cents a head)
Green cabbage, 25 cents a pound
Radishes, green onions, cilantro, 25 cents a bunch
Italian flat leaf parsley, 50 cents a bunch
Pasilla peppers, 79 cents a pound
Red and green peppers, 50 cents each
Eggplant 88 cents each
Mustard and turnip greens, kale, 69 cents a bunch
Haas avocados, 69 cents each
Potatoes, 5 pound bag for 99 cents
Jicama, carrots, 33 cents a pound
Roma tomatoes, 59 cents a pound.
Cotija cheese, $4.59 a pound
Media crema, $1.29
Chipotle chiles, 7 ounce can, $1
Lentils, bulk pinto beans, 50 cents a pound
Bulk rice, 79 cents a pound
HUGE bunch of fresh dill that stayed fresh several weeks, $1.29
Large bunch of mint, 79 cents
Tomatillos, 59 cents a pound
Cucumbers, 33 cents each
Mexican grey squash (zucchini equivalent) 50 cents a pound

You get the idea. How's the produce? That varies. Sometimes you have to select carefully. Occasionally, I've had to work hard to find bell peppers that looked okay; other times they're all fine. The pasillas are usually great. I bought the roma tomatoes only because they were so cheap, but chose carefully and found that they had at least as much color and flavor, if not more, than the hothouse tomatoes I'd been paying $3 to $4 a pound for at Safeway.

Last week Food City had the single most gorgeous radishes I've seen outside of France which I promptly bought even though they were a relatively high 44 cents a bunch. I use the radish greens in salads, so it's important to me to get radishes where the greens are still actually green.

When we first started shopping at Food City, we experienced sticker shock at the checkout. The opposite kind from what we'd been used to. When I got the total my thought was "That can't be right!" I can't remember how many decades it's been since I've checked out of a grocery store in the low double digits. I'm almost embarrassed to use my credit card.

Downsides? Of course. The stores are not antiseptic. The very first time I shopped at a Food City, with some trepidation, I discovered a large wad of chewed gum stuck to the shopping cart. (I simply got a plastic bag, removed the gum, and deposited the whole thing in a garbage can. I guess the fact that they have garbage cans throughout the store should tell you something.) And I think I once saw a mother and son stuffing packages from the meat counter into their clothing but courageously decided it was best to look the other way and not make a scene.

And speaking of plastic bags, theirs have blue printing on them, which is fine except it flakes off. So you get little blue flecks on your produce, your hands and, eventually, on your refrigerator door. I'm pretty sure this is not food grade dye. Just a wild guess. So now I bring my own plastic bags, which is more environmentally responsible anyway.

More troubling is the fact that there is some question in my mind about their labor practices. I haven't looked into it exhaustively, which reflects poorly on me. Here's Basha's take on the situation. And here's what UFCW has to say. I hope Basha's and UFCW can come to an agreement that serves the workers well.

And you do need to watch carefully as your groceries are rung up. I've had cilantro and Italian parsley mistaken for each other (this happens everywhere), pinto beans mistaken for the more expensive peruanos, parsley mistaken for mint. But the checkers are agreeable, bilingual, and more than willing to rectify mistakes.

The larger Food City markets have in house bakeries as well as tortillerias.

The most amazing thing Food City offers? Chiles verdes (called that here, I think they're what I call Anaheims) roasted outside on a wood fire for $1.50 a pound. They've become a total staple in our household. It's going to be a shock to shop in Seattle again where these same peppers will be near $3 a pound -- raw. Of course I can roast them on a gas flame, but you don't get the wonderful smoky taste that comes from peppers roasted on a wood fire. When we head north, it will be with an ice chest full of roasted peppers and Cotija cheese.