bc magazine

Taste x Fresh Opens in Kowloon Bay

Shoppers in and around Kowloon Bay have somewhere new to spend their consumption vouchers with the opening of Taste x Fresh, a new supermarket partnership on the first floor of Amoy Plaza.

How does it differ from a ‘traditional’ Park’n’Shop Taste… The store is split into sixteen zones with the Taste areas pretty much as you’d expect; full (too full) of a wide range of products from across the globe, with multiple product promotion areas to encourage you to taste, try and buy.

Fresh have turned the regular fruit and vegetable section into an air-con premium version of a Hong Kong market. Instead of regular fruit and veg, there are Korean and Japanese versions. Instead of local meat, it’s tasty American, Australian, Japanese beef, pork and chicken imported and served chilled and sliced.

Something a little different to many supermarkets is that you can, as it was explained to bc, buy your meat or seafood and then have it cooked how you like it at one of the surrounding cooked food ‘stalls’. Unfortunately, the store was a little packed on opening day to test this process – but the theory is sound. And having it in a shopping centre is nice if you’re feeling a little peckish and/or lazy.

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The store is an interesting experiment/collaboration and probably offers people in the area access to products and tastes that perhaps they haven’t been exposed to before.

But, and there’s sadly a massive BUT to give all this overseas food a premium look and to keep it fresh it’s bundled and covered in tons of plastic and packaging with not a mention of recycling to be seen.

Sadly it’s not something limited to Taste x Fresh, it’s a problem that’s been slowly smothering Hong Kong supermarkets for a few years. It’s just disappointing for a brand new partnership to see that so little thought appears to have gone into reuse and recycle. There are shops in Hong Kong where you can for example bring your own containers for dried goods.

Park’n’Shop and Uni-China Group have looked to offer something new, and if you live close you’ll find an expanded range of products – sadly they’ll be smothered in multiple layers of plastic…

https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2021/20210818-Taste-x-Fresh-Opening-Kowloon-Bay/i-FL2Frf5

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Taste x Fresh
1/F, Phase 1, Amoy Plaza, 77 Ngau Tau Kok Road, Kowloon Bay.
Opening hours: 8 am to 10:30 pm.

Monoprix Debuts in Hong Kong

French supermarket chain Monoprix joins British counterparts Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury’s on the shelves of our local stores as it launches it’s eponymous range of products at Marketplace by Jasons.

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Great Food Hall ReOpens to Intoxicate Your Taste Buds

The Cheese room is open again! After an extensive cosmetic makeover, Great Food Hall in the basement of Pacific Place has reopened. The new upmarket concrete with hints of bronze design fits with Pacific Place’s attempt to position itself a premium location, despite the resultant drop in foot traffic.

The renovated store features a lot more ready to eat options, there’s salads, cooked meats, sushi, Korean etc all with portion sizes and prices surprisingly competitive compared to other options. You can also preorder your salad (sadly not any of the other lunch options, maybe that’ll come in the future) on the new Great-to-Go app that hopefully will make getting lunch a quicker and less stressful experience.

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Thankfully the cheese room remains, stocked full of tasty fromage from across the globe including France’s Mons Comte and Italy’s Artigiana. There’s sustainable Italian caviar from Calvisius at the ‘Luxury’ counter. As well as a range of fresh smoked salmon from H Forman & Son, the UK oldest salmon curlers. Meat lovers will find the beef, lamb and pork from across the globe including US Brandt Beef from California, Tasmanian Cape Grim Beef and English Yellow Longhorn from The Ginger Pig. This wide selection offers you the chance to buy the same cut from different producers, cook them together and compare the flavours and textures. All are delicious – but also quite unique.

At a US Beef organised meat tasting in the old Great, an artisan butcher from California offered this advice on buying meat – and it’s worth repeating again. “Decide how you are going to cook your meat first, then ask your butcher which cuts are best suited for that cooking method.” Great also still offers a dry-aging and a cooked to order service.

Also along the back wall next to the meat counters, Cosro Italia offers freshly made pasta, pizza and ready to eat meals. For vegetarians, there’s a wide range of salads and many products on the shelves. While Tai Pan Pies offers sweet and savoury options.

Triple O’s remains and there’s a new coffee counter One Shot offering freshly made coffees. Sadly while there’s lots of tea on the shelves we didn’t find a nice cup to ‘lai cha’ to enjoy with our lunch.

The remodelled store looks a lot ‘fancier’, but also feels as though it’s more expensive to shop there. Take a look, there’s a lot to intoxicate and excite your taste buds.

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