The Market Report

Next on our world tour is Spain and Latin America. Casablanca Supermarket in Elizabeth, NJ, is a standby for all things Spanish and Latin, and is especially known for its butcher. This store is about three blocks from Super Supermarket . It's located at 701 Marshall St, Elizabeth, NJ. Like Super, Casablanca is supplied by General Trading and uses the Parade storebrand. Casablanca has recently introduced an online store for ordering imported products, and they will deliver anywhere in the US, it looks like. They seem to focus on products from Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Spain, and Uruguay. I'd assume that's what the store focuses on as well, but I've never been inside.

Today we're heading to southern Asia for our Snapshot. OK, not really. But that's the region of the world we're covering today. D Mart is an Indian and southern Asian grocery store, which makes sense here in Parsippany due to the large southern Asian population in town and in the neighboring towns. This location joins an older location in Jersey City. I don't know an exact date for opening here, but it's some time around the spring of 2018. D Mart (196 US-46) is relatively small, but it is a fairly specialized store. Parsippany is also home to the much larger Delight Big Bazaar at 1470 US-46, which I unfortunately have not been to, and multiple smaller Indian and Asian markets.

Today's international foods store features a region of the world I really don't cover too much here on the blog -- Italy! Piccolo's Gastronomia Italiana is an Italian specialty market selling produce, imported foods, and meat and deli goods. The store, located at 484 Bergen Blvd in Ridgefield, is situated just north of the Key Food Marketplace-turned-SuperFresh-turned-Freshway in Fairview, which you can see here . Here's a look inside the store courtesy of Google Maps:

Kam Man Foods (aka Kam Man Market in some locations) is a five-store chain based in Edison, NJ that specializes in Chinese and other eastern Asian foods. According to Wikipedia, its name in Chinese translates to Golden Door. The original location is in Chinatown in Manhattan, while newer locations have opened in Edison and East Hanover, NJ, as well as Boston and Quincy , MA. The Boston location has since closed. The store here in East Hanover is located in a mall that was also once home to a nearly 100,000-square-foot Pathmark, although the stores were never open at the same time. The entire mall has recently undergone a facade renovation, which was in progress at the time of my visit. I first visited this Kam Man long before I got interested in supermarkets. I was blown away, especially by the produce -- so many things I had never seen before! Then I actually started to visit a lot of supermarkets, and was introduced to Food Bazaar, SuperFresh Food World, Hmart, and other si...