We noticed Dav­is Food Mart pop up on the corner of Tarana­ki Street and Karo Drive a little before Xmas, so we decided it was time to check it out to see if Mt Cook now has a prop­er super­mar­ket to call its own.

It does­n’t.

But, we did find some very inter­est­ing things any­way, and you can read more about them after the break. 

Our first impres­sions of the space was that it was clean, airy and lack­ing the rot­ten smell that many Asi­an mar­kets suf­fer from. At first glance it appeared to be mostly Asi­an food, but it turns out we did­n’t glance par­tic­u­larly hard. Dif­fer­ent aisles are in fact ded­ic­ated to dif­fer­ent cuisines. We star­ted out in India with its 20kg bags of cha­pati flour and a whole range of boxed cur­ries, before com­ing to what I think were Malay­si­an snacks, includ­ing duri­an chips.

Then there was bay after bay after bay of noodles. Ooodles of Noodles! I have nev­er seen such a broad selec­tion before. This is only a tiny frac­tion of what was on offer: 

Amongst the china for sale, we also found a wok big enough to stir-fry a baby in, a bar­gain at only $59:

And then we came to the West­ern food selec­tion, with a huge range of impor­ted pasta and also some Mex­ic­an stuff that I have not seen any­where else in Wel­ling­ton, like chi­polte chil­lies: 

Then there was a meat freez­er which although small had lamb racks, free-range chick­en and duck breasts for $8.50:

In the freez­er sec­tion there was a wide range of all kinds of things, includ­ing these frozen duri­an which they sell by the kilo: 

There was also the begin­nings of a deli sec­tion, fea­tur­ing parmes­an cheese, buf­falo moz­arella, olives and cured meats from La Bella Italia: 

And in things that I did­n’t take pho­tos of, there were huge ranges of spices (giant bags of Star Anise for $15 just beg­ging to be turned into jew­ellery), curry pastes, dried pulses includ­ing the hard-to-find puy len­tils and a really tiny and dis­mal fresh fruit sec­tion.

So, in sum­mary, Dav­is Food Mart with its park­ing is a great place to stock up on harder-to-find staples, but you will need to sup­ple­ment your shop­ping with a trip to the fresh mar­kets or a super­mar­ket because I’m sure that you all real­ise you need to eat veges. Oh, and it does­n’t sell booze either, which is a real shame, but I think it is def­in­itely worth a vis­it.