Thursday, March 01, 2007

Cut-Price Deli at Greenslopes

Noticed the Cut-Price Deli when visiting the Coles at Greenslopes. They are located inside the centre, near the fruit shop and the health food shop.
They had a prominently-displayed clipping from the Courier Mail on the counter, which reviewed them quite favourably. Apparently the owner is widely-travelled around Europe and neighbouring lands, and the deli is a reflection of her desire to bring the tastiness of the world back to Brisbane.
Quite a good selection of olives, marinated mushrooms and artichokes, tomatoes, feta, fresh haloumi and so on. I'd only go there for the olives, probably. I wanted to buy some pecorino for my pasta sauce, and as there was none in the cabinet, I asked the serving person if they had any out the back.
What?
Pecorino.
What's that?
Like parmesan.
I'll ask, she said.
No, it's fine, I said, I'll just take the parmesan.
No, she said, I'll find out for you. Top marks for follow-through. Three people later, turns out they don't have any pecorino (didn't see that coming), only parmesan.
Right, I said, I'll take a small slab off that corner.
What corner? she said. Which corner?
That one. Like that.
This much?
No, less.
Eventually got my parmesan slab.
Then I decided to ask about a brie that was in the cabinet for $59.99 a kilogram. "Where's that brie from? Why is it so expensive?"
Um, I don't know. Which one?
The brie, there.
The brie....um.... I'll find out for you.
No no, I said, please, it's OK. Thanks.

Maybe she was new. On the plus side, the parmesan was really very excellent. I will probably pop back to try the olives and mushrooms soon, as well.
On the downside, there wasn't too much that was cut-price about it. Standard deli prices: between $26 and $35 per kilo for most of the marinated stuff. My parmesan was $35 per kilo. You could probably get a better deal at the supermarket deli counter, but you take your life into your hands with the quality there. At least at the Cut-Price Deli, you have some knowledge of who made it, where it came from, what it's made of and so on.

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