City Shop > Nanjing Xi Lu

@Bill

Use a cleaver? Christ dude, I just LOOK at chocolate and it cuts itself into neat little rows.

@narsfweasels - real men bake from scratch. Here's some tips for you - take a pass on the big costly imported bag of chocolate chips in favor of some big Dove bars. Cut them up with the cleaver and substitute. If you pick the bars with fruit and nuts in them, it brings a new dimension to cookies or brownies. If your mix comes out dry, its probably due to the size of local eggs, which are small. Add a yolk for every two eggs your recipe calls for and you should be back on track.

HAHA LOL i have been complaining about the odor for a while hahaha, didn't know how to describe it but pickles + milk sounds like the right choice hahaha..

Food is very average, assortment the same, sometimes they run out of a product and take ages to replenish. Nowadays I only visit city shop to buy 3 items: Bread, starch and "arm&hammer toothpaste."

This supermarket smells weird... like someone spilled the pickles and tried to clean it up with chocolate milk.

Unusual odour aside, the bread is top notch. Certainly better than those Christine Bakeries and Jing'an Bakery. Banana bread - which I believe City Weekend did an article on is really awesome and fair value for 5 kuai a slice. Whether you like everything else on offer will depend on your willingness to pay over the odds for things like imported beers and sweets. They do have a few notable wines that are cheaper here than in say, Carrefour and smaller local wineries, which is a plus.

However, some of the staff still seem to not be over the whole "foreigners like to buy food!" thing. As well as the local "Sod You" attitude to sending more people to handle the queues when everybody has been waiting for more than ten minutes. I guess the low wages are an understandably poor motivator.

The best thing, however, is that I am now BAKING COOKIES LIKE A BOSS, thanks to their Betty Crocker instant cookie mix. There is LITERALLY nothing more manly than baking cookies, and my cookies taste like testosterone-filled sugared-awesome with chocolate chips.