Enjoy shopping for your fruit and vegetables
As it happens, whenever I go grocery shopping, I spend most of my time in the “Fruits and Vegetables” section. Since the offered assortment at local market and stores varies in price and quality, I have compiled a personal list of the best places to buy certain items.
As a rule, one place cannot offer that perfect combination of quality, price, and location, so naturally, you’ll have to drop by several shopping centers to find everything you need. Of course, scouring the city in search of more appetizing oranges, fresher lettuce, or cheaper tomatoes takes more time than your local one-stop shop.
Yet the game is worth the candles – you get a tasty dinner and some extra pocket change.
However, while preparing this article, I had to choose one location for the “Best of” title, which didn’t prove to be easy.
At first glance, the most convenient way of buying fruits and vegetables is placing an order through an internet site, like www.salads.com.ua. But you never know how fresh the produce will be when it arrives at your door. Besides, the assortment is not that impressive – you won’t find any exotic produce on the site.
Supermarket chains like Silpo, Velyka Kyshenia, Billa, or smaller grocery stores are also not the best option. The assortment at these places is limited to standard cabbage, potatoes, carrots, oranges, and bananas, with the only “exotics” being strawberries, ginger, kohlrabi, and cherry tomatoes, which are actually sold in most supermarkets these days. Our menus are already filled with more unusual products. By the way, cherry tomatoes (Hr 69 per kilo) appeared to be the cheapest option at Velyka Kyshenia, but there’s no sense in wasting your time to get a vine of cherry tomatoes.
The famous supermarket Furshet Gurman (Gourmet) at Mandarin Plaza shopping center, known for its wide selection of rare products, has far more to offer. Their assortment of fruit is quite large – including exotics like kumquat, papaya, carambola, and other strange-looking and strange-named items. However the choice of peculiar vegetables narrows to several types of cabbage, shiitake mushrooms, asparagus, and herbs like rosemary, magnolia-vine, sage, and thyme.
After visiting the second Furshet Gurman at Komod shopping center I was stunned by the price difference between these two supermarkets. For example, the downtown location offers herbs at a price of Hr 155 per kilo, while the latter sells them for Hr 122 per kilo. The central Kyiv locale surely has something to do with it.
Furshet Gurman also offers a delivery service through its internet site, which is truly convenient, especially considering that the delivery prices are the lower prices offered at the Komod Furshet location.
Unfortunately, not all the items sold at the supermarket are not available for delivery. Either way, it’s always better to choose vegetables or fruits personally at the market stand, rather than entrust your dinner to a thoughtlessly packed order.
Among the more popular local markets are Volodymyrskiy and Besarabskiy. Volodymyrskiy market, located right near Palats Ukrayiny concert hall, has a wide selection of greens and fruit, including some exotic variants. The prices at both markets are the same – cherry tomatoes for Hr 80 a kilo, bananas for Hr 8 to 11 a kilo, strawberries for Hr 100 a kilo, and oranges for Hr 15 a kilo. But the choice at Volodymyrskiy market is much smaller than at Besarabskiy. Neither market offers a wide variety of exotic fruits, but you can always pop over to Furshet Gurman for rarer items, which makes the location of Besarabskiy market more convenient.
Besarabskiy market offers more rare vegetables and fruits than Volodymyrskiy mostly because of its location directly near Khreshchatyk. Rare fruits are not that common, but among greens I found sorrel, rucola, mint, basil, and what not. The price is a bit higher than in the nearby Furshet, but you can always bargain. I was offered a tuft of rosemary for Hr 20, yet when I was already leaving, another stand lowered the price immediately to Hr 15. Besides, the market produce looks far fresher and more appetizing than that sold in the supermarket. Of course you will pay Hr 2 to Hr 5 more for oranges, tomatoes, apples, or bananas but they will look and taste far better.
Besarabskiy Market (2 Besarabska square, 234-9207)
