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.