Friday, March 18, 2011

International Marketplace....of Delicious!

Everyone tells me I have a weird taste in food.  Even when I was a kid I didn't think anything of having pickles followed immediately by a dish of ice cream.  When I first had a dolma, it was love at first taste.  Ume Shiso is my favorite sushi, and there are a few places in town that give me a blank look when I try to order it.  I like a lot of weird food.

Since the Neon Beast and I decided to try and eat home more often, one of my friends introduced me to International Marketplace on Trop and Decatur.  As soon as we drove into the parking lot I was dubious.  I would've much rather been across the street at Starbucks away from the riff-raff, but I forged ahead despite the fear of being robbed before we even got through the door.  The staff was less than helpful, and more than a little creepy.  In fact, they were the ones that I was afraid was gonna rob me.

After going through the first couple of rows, I had to go to the bathroom, where there was nowhere to hang my purse, and a creepy lady talking on the world's first cell phone complete with default Nokia ring tone.  So far, I wasn't impressed.

But then my friend pointed out they had...wait for it...canned dolmas.  Now, I've never met a dolma I didn't like, but that's because they were freshly made every time I had them.  What would a canned dolma taste like?  Maybe it would be like olives, in the sense that it really didn't make much difference?  For a couple of bucks, I was totally up for trying it out.  As we kept along through the store, there were so many things for as cheap as you could possibly make them.  The small bottles of peppercinis that I'd been buying for $2 each at Wal-mart, here was around $8 for a giant tub of them.  There was even fresh fish at the back, and other various seafood.

By the time we got about 2/3rds of the way around (I had just picked up a giant pack of Hello Panda cookies for Neon Beast for $5, whereas we used to get a small package for that much at World Market) when they made an announcement that they were closing in 15 minutes.

My friend and I looked at each other, shocked.  We hadn't realized that we'd spent so much time in there.  We checked the time and found that we hadn't spent that much time in there.  As it turns out, the International Marketplace is only open until 6pm, and not even open on Sundays!

Then we got to the front to pay, and it's $10 for a yearly membership here, which is optional.  But, if you don't get it, everything is about 5% more.  Another downfall.  But they have so many amazing things, $10 a year seems worth it for all the other downfalls of this store.

And the dolmas were perfectly good!  I took Neon Beast there this week, and this was our haul (for just under $30);

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