On a weekly trip to a local Asian supermarket, The New 168 Market (1050 Somerset Street W.), something caught our eye in the cookie aisle.

Celebrity Endorsed Processed Food
Resembling Swiss rolls, only made out of yellow cake and filled with a pink cream, the cakes we have actually seen before. Only this time, we recognized the Asian celebrity on the box.

After looking over the box, we found the name of the celebrity nestled amongst a handful of Korean characters, Rain.

Winged Rain

Rain is a successful Korean pop (KPop) music star who was introduced to American Hollywood audiences via the Wachowskis' forgettable Speed Racer and, more recently, Ninja Assassin.

Ninja Assassin is where Jenn and I first saw Rain, having watched the movie at the Silver City movie theater in Gloucester.

Ninja Assassin Movie Poster
Source: Imp Awards

Wildly violent and excessively bloody, the movie features some impressive oriental-style fight choreography that reminds me of the ninja movies from my youth, even co-staring Sho Kosugi, the actor and martial artist who was most sought after to play ninja in the 1980s.

Before Ninja Assasin's premiere, Beyond Hollywood's Nix asked if Rain underwent a physical transformation for his role.

Rain as "Raizo" in Ninja Assassin
Source: Ooh La La blog

To answer Nix's question...Umm yes and he spent much of the movie shirtless too...

As for what do the cakes taste like, neither Jenn nor I have mustered up the courage to try them yet. We're wondering if they resulted in the marked transformation from Kpop star to fearsome Ninja Assassin.

Particulars:
New 168 Market
1050 Somerset Street W.
(613)729-8895

In Ottawa, the battle between big box and locally owned has descended upon Chinatown. With a newly opened T&T supermarket, the Vancouver originating chain's 4th largest in Canada, pressure has been applied on Chinatown. Chinatown shops are smaller, locally-owned, and specialized in Vietnamese, Thai, Chinese, and Malay groceries. The monopoly the shops once enjoyed is gone.

Now, the formerly pre-eminent Kowloon Market in Chinatown, once an extremely crowded and bustling business, has lost significant customer-base. The store is far less busy on Saturdays, normally peek shopping hours. Parents who drop off their children for Saturday Chinese language school, caravan to T&T in the Riverside South area. They fill its enormous parking lot, making Ottawa's T&T the consistently busiest one I have ever come across. Do not expect a leisurely shopping experience after 10:00 am. For perspective, I have been to several T&T's in Vancouver (including its first location), Toronto, and Edmonton.

To make matters worse, many of the shops lost employees to T&T. The butcher Jenn and I frequented at Kowloon Market for barbecued meats is now masterfully wielding her cleaver at T&T. In-house bakers, fish mongers, and cashiers defected. Even waiters from Chinatown restaurants, familiar faces from Yangtze (700 Somerset Street W.) and Chu Sing (691 Somerset Street W.), can be found working shifts at T&T. Prevalent reasons: better pay and an opportunity for benefits.

With significant turnover, some of the bakery at Kownloon Market has changed. Prices have been knocked down to compete with T&T and the buns are physically bigger. Curious, Jenn and I purchased baked (as opposed to steamed) barbecue pork (char-siu) buns (bao or baozi) from both T&T ($1.39) and Kowloon market ($1.09) and compared them. In the process, we happened to attempt to re-invent American South comfort food, fried chicken on a waffle, but more on that later.

Regarding the buns, both were brushed with an egg wash to brown. The Kowloon Market bao seemed more evenly browned.

T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Both were baked in-house the morning they were purchased.

Customarily, our T&T bao came individually wrapped in a self-sealing cellophane bag.

Individually-wrapped Bao
In fact, no matter where you go, bao from T&T are sold in the same bags. In fact, the char-siu bao pictured above was purchased from the T&T in the West Edmonton Mall.

To compare the Ottawa T&T and Kowloon Market originating bao, we weighed them and cut them open to look at their crumb and fillings.

Firstly, off to the scales:

T&T Char-siu Bao - 150 g

Kowloon Market Char-siu Bao - 144 g

Next, dissection:

T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Both white bread buns had the texture of super market dinner rolls, only sweeter. The T&T bao's filling was more centered. Conversely, the Kowloon Market's was off-center and it was much more red in colour.


T&T Char-Siu Bao Filling
Filling-wise, the T&T filling was predominately lean meat and included little sauce.


Kowloon Market Char-Siu Bao Filling
The Kowloon market filling was a mixture of fatty meat, onions, and sauce.


T&T (left) and Kowloon Market (right) Char-Siu Bao
Flavour-wise, we found the T&T filling less intensely flavoured and more savoury. The Kowloon Market filling was strongly flavoured, tasting almost entirely of hoisin sauce.

If I were forced to choose, I would slightly favour the T&T char-siu bao, but bao wasn't our lunch that day.

At Kowloon market, Jenn and I eyed the hanging roasted pig after picking up a char-siu bao for the comparison. When we saddled up to the counter at the back of the store, we lucked out, ordering 2 lbs of belly-portion crackled roast pork.

Belly Portion Crackled Roast Pork

With our roast pork sporting an expertly crackled skin that was crisp and flavourful, I decided to stop off at Viva Loca in the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre, home of Great Canada Theater Company (GCTC) for something to accompany it. The theater center is located at the corner of Holland Avenue and Wellington Street W.

Oat and Whole Wheat Pancakes
We used the stack of made-to-order oat and whole wheat pancakes to re-invent the fried chicken on a waffle.

Roasted Pork Belly with Crackling on a Pancake
And yes, it tasted great with maple syrup.

As an aside, we observed Loblaws Superstore on Richmond Road selling individually-wrapped and nor Northern Chinese-style buns, starting in September 2009.

A Variety of Bao from Loblaws Superstore
A closer look at the labels reveals the source of the bao.

Source from a Toronto Bakery
Purchased from Jin Xin Bakery Ltd in Markham, Ontario, the buns are shipped in in refrigerated trucks, arriving cold. Not only is it interesting that the Loblaws CEO Galen Weston has been espousing the virtues of locally sourced produce and products when one of his Superstores sells trucked-in bakery, but Weston completely missed the point about why Asian supermarkets have in-house bakeries. Customers like fresh buns, not ones that taste stale. Shipping perishable buns in refrigerated trucks causes them, like fresh bread, to change texture. Refrigeration changes the protein and starch structure of fresh bakery. At least this means Loblaws Superstore cannot compete with T&T and Chinatown supermarkets.

Particulars:
Ottawa T&T
224 Hunt Club Road (corner of Hunt Club and Riverside)
(613)731-8113

Kowloon Market
712 Somerset Street W.
(613)233-1108

Viva Loca
1233 Wellington Street W.
(613)728-8482

Loblaws Super Store
190 Richmond Road
(613)722-5890

In the past, I have been known to snap a pic or two with a camera in a grocery store. Apparently, this risks the ire of store management and could result in a potential lifetime ban from the premises. Yes, even though there are no signs alerting customers to the the policy, management is quite serious about banning people for taking pictures of their products. This is why the more recent "megamartFinds"-categorized blog posts are about products that I have already purchased.

This said, the following are older images from foodiePrints' photo archives. I found them while rummaging around for material to include in another blog post.

Introducing Johnny's, a brand of sauces and seasonings that sport some amusing packaging:

Johnny's bottled salad dressings

Johnny's Jamaica Mistake

Honey You're Terrific, with Mustard

Johnny's seasonings:

Jamaican Seasonings
I'm a little troubled by the fact that the "Jamaica Me Crazy" salad seasoning contains natural ingredients. Where as, the seasoning salt and steak seasoning are "all natural."

Natural or not, when it comes to thirst quenching, squash isn't the first thing that comes to mind.

Grantham's Squash Drinks
Apparently, they are flavoured with citrus.

Baby mumbles about citrus?

Baby Mum-Mum

Speaking about babies, these were 2 steps away from the "family planning" aisle...

280 mL Beverage Container

Priceless

To end, let's take a step back a few years to the reason I stopped watching television:

Fear Factor Popsicles
When reality television went the way of Fear Factor, I canceled my cable subscription.

BTW, two potential reasons why store managements at certain supermarkets would prefer its customers not have cameras follow after the jump...

More after the jump...

If you head over to Costco, you can pickup a box of 6 sealed 6 oz packages of deli-sliced Montreal-style smoked meat in the cold-cut section. They come from Dunn's, an authentic purveyor of smoked meat, whose various establishments sell really tall smoked meat sandwiches. Each package is meant for an individual serving, which, as I found out, equates to an entire meal. Instructions on the box recommend storing the packages refrigerated if they are to be eaten soon or frozen for the long term.

Great! So what happens when it comes time to put together a sandwich? The meat is cold and uncooperative. It's not clear if the packaging could survive being submersed in boiling water. Solution: make like a deli and steam the meat like it were pastrami.

Step 1: Cut the meat out of its packaging and place it into aluminum foil

Wrapped and ready for steaming

Step 2: Bring 2-3 inches of water to a boil in a pot at medium heat. The pot needs to be able to accommodate either a steamer basket or a colander.

Step 3: Once water has been brought to a rolling boil, turn the heat down to medium-low. Place the wrapped meat into the steaming apparatus and steam for 5 minutes

Step 4: Remove, let stand 2 minutes, plate up and serve.

Serving Suggestions:
Single Decker with Dijon mustard and medium cheddar cheese on rye

Layering

Served
Suffices a regular appetite at supper time.

Double Decker with Dijon mustard, medium cheddar cheese, sliced baby tomatoes, on rye

Served
Eat when starving for dinner at supper time.

In the midst of pop (soft drink to the rest of the world) giant PepsiCo Inc. offering approximately $6 billion USD to takeover its two largest bottlers, Pepsi Bottling Group and PepsiAmericas, two questions need to be asked. While PepsiCo has publicly stated that it wants to cut costs and secure control of its brands as it grows its non-carbonated drink line, what will happen to the cola drink that started it all? And, what precisely is the Coca Cola Corporation up to as the drink industry experiences a paradigm shift? While I have no answer to the former, regarding the latter, Coca Cola has started bottling Coke in aluminium instead of glass.

Originally announced in 2008, aluminium contour bottles were test marketed in night clubs and special events, coming in red, silver, and black for Coke, Diet Coke and Coke Zero respectively. I found the red one being sold in a corner store, nestled in a busy office building, across the river in Gatineau, Quebec. Costing a whopping $2.70 CAD/each (including taxes), I more purchased a bottle out of sheer curiosity than to quench my thirst.

Realizing, that none of my Toronto friends have seen Coke bottled like this before, I decided to perform a very unscientific comparison between the 250 mL aluminium bottle (cost: $2.70) and a more traditional 355 mL aluminium can (cost: $0.87). Here are the results:

aluminium bottle indeed holds approximately 250 mL of fluid
Cost-wise, purchasing Coke in an aluminum bottle is approximately 0.011 $/mL


aluminium can indeed holds approximately 355 mL of fluid
Cost-wise, purchasing Coke in an aluminum can is approximately 0.003 $/mL


mass of aluminum bottle is approximately 1.5 oz
The aluminium bottle was not at all malleable.


mass of aluminum can does not register
The aluminium can was exceedingly malleable.

Conclusion: The aluminium bottle, while holding 29.6% less drink, is made with significantly more aluminium than an aluminium can.

Apparently, this isn't the first time that the Coca Cola corporation has toyed with aluminium bottles. According to an undergraduate paper from a student at the Polytechnic University of Wisconsin-Stout, a less contoured version was test driven in Japan in 2002. In 2005, Coca Cola commissioned the design and release of five limited edition collector's aluminium bottles in Europe. Since the aluminium contour bottle I purchased resembles that of the "Magnificent 5 (M5)", perhaps it is fallout from the European marketing campaign.

Whatever the case, I am unconvinced that this preparation of Coca Cola's flagship product will grow beyond its niche as a premium product, providing a conversation piece until its novelty fades.

Personally, I prefer to purchase drinks in containers that feature more drink than container. Given that Earth Day (April 22, 2009) is fast approaching, I also wonder about the environmental benefits of the aluminium bottle. Does it being recyclable outweigh packaging smaller amounts of beverage in much more aluminium?