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.
https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2021/20210818-Taste-x-Fresh-Opening-Kowloon-Bay/i-zkhFsx6
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
https://bcmagazine.smugmug.com/Bcene-photos/2021/20210818-Taste-x-Fresh-Opening-Kowloon-Bay/i-g75Bw54
Taste x Fresh
1/F, Phase 1, Amoy Plaza, 77 Ngau Tau Kok Road, Kowloon Bay.
Opening hours: 8 am to 10:30 pm.