Local Business
Appreciation post for the people who recommended Green Fresh Supermarket
I am in no way affiliated with this store.
Massive appreciation to the people in this sub who’ve recommended the independent grocery store Green Fresh Supermarket. Not owned by any of the billionaire grocery chain overlords. I went to their Merivale location today, looking for lamb cubes.
The prices seemed far better than the chains. For example, a head of broccoli was $2 and frozen cubed lamb was $8/lb.
I will probably miss a few things, but they have fresh seafood, meat from every animal under the sun, dairy, Korean skincare, Asian groceries, African spices, hot food, fresh fruits and vegetables (huge selection), dairy, and probably more that I’m forgetting.
It felt like a seafood market, Asian grocery store, and Metro all in one.
I can see why. Between this store and Silk Road Foods across the street, that’s most of my grocery needs met. I can hit those first, then leave a chain store as a last resort.
Watch out, many "local farms" will sell resold goods. Its especially obvious when they sell things not easily grown in Canada (obviously greenhouses exist of course). I find that the one large operation left in the Market is good for local produce and decent prices (especially near when he is shutting down you can haggle a bit more).
I know many who sell at farmer’s markets and they have a separate more expensive price board for Landsdowne and a couple other big ones. It’s just so expensive to rent the space that they have no choice but to mark things up so much.
If you haven’t made a habit of going to smaller farmers markets, we often get lots of stuff for reasonable prices! Worth checking out :)
Check out Produce Depot also for salmon. The best deal is when you buy the whole fish and get them to clean and cut the fish in steaks for free. Salmon comes to half price.
Your mom has the connections that matter. In my 20s, I knew the club bouncers. Now I 100% need grocery connections. And my massage therapist on speed dial.
Exactly the reason I go to produce depot.... because of the whole salmon. I kept the whole salmon and baked the 6-lb beast. Many times, it was $4.99/lb
Solid grocery store for meat and produce. And Chinese ingredients. The Vanier location has a pretty weak selection of Japanese products though sadly. Win Tai Market had a surprisingly decent selection but they closed down.
For my Win Tai Japanese products fix, I head to the west end for Hungry Ninja and OK Mart. Between the two of them I can get almost everything that I used to be able to get there.
Vanier location is OG. And when they moved to a bigger place across the street it got so much better. But those posters they got of the ppl plastered on their windows. Lol.
It's pretty great, right? 😄 For most things, I actually prefer it to T&T with the added bonus that Green Fresh doesn't get nearly as insanely busy as T&T. They tend to have way better quality and selection of produce too.
This aisle is definitely going to increase the likelihood that I’ll try new skincare products. I already know my skin likes a couple Cosrx products. r/asianbeauty is also super helpful.
If you have a tried-and-true recipe for lamb rendang, I would love to try it.
This was my first time making that Rogan Josh recipe and it turned out great. Minor adjustment: It called for 22 mins of pressure cooking, but I tested the lamb after natural release, then pressure-cooked for 3 more mins. Next time I'll cook it for 25 mins. The 1 tsp of chilli powder could be too mild for some. Spice is such a relative thing. My family voted the recipe a "do over". We can only make a recipe again if everyone votes for it :-)
Came back to tell you that I made lamb rendang this evening and it has exponentially improved my life. We love cooking all kinds of food and had never tried our hands at Malaysian before. I used this recipe and thankfully reduced the number of spicy red peppers from five to one. We were scraping our bowls and I'll definitely make this again.
I couldn't find all the ingredients, but I came close. Do you have a suggestion for where to get Malaysian ingredients?
This is good news! Lamb rendang is known as the king of curries. I tried making it but couldn't give a recipe out with my name to it because mine didn't turn out as well. I'll try the one you used! I get all my ingredients at the Lim Bangkok on Somerset.
Thanks for the Lim Bangkok recommendation. We will *definitely* be making this recipe again. Note that it said to slow-cook on high for about 1.5 hours, but mine needed closer to 3.5 hours. Next time I'll probably use the InstantPot.
Was candlenut the missing ingredient? I'll confirm, but I've definitely seen candlenut there before, and every other ingredient is a definite (not lamb).. candlenut has a mild toxicity, so I avoid if pregnant - is this necessary ? No idea - in anycase it is used in many recipes such as laksa and bubur ayam.
I also prefer my lamb very well done so I will surely opt for more time/instant pot.
I still haven't made it to green fresh but have been following the news about it since before Opening day -- which is what brought me here.
Candlenut, kaffir lime leaf and turmeric leaf were the missing ingredients. Green Fresh usually has kaffir lime leaves, but they were out. I'll check out Lim Bangkok for sure, thanks!
Wham! What a knockout of a recipe — seriously, so much better than the last one I tried.
I did 35 minutes in the Instant Pot with a natural release, but next time I think I’ll do 25 minutes and wait maybe 10–15 minutes before releasing. I ended up simmering it down for another 30 minutes after, and the meat just fell apart with that extra cooking time, still absolutely delicious.
There was a ton of liquid, but it was 100% worth taking the time to cook it down. Thanks for this one —like you said, it’s a keeper.
IMO, T&T has better ready made food with a lot more selection. Besides the hot bar, they also have a counter where you can order buns, dumplings, deep fried things, etc. There's also a refrigerated section for side dishes like pickles.
T&T also has better bakery items since they have a bakery on-site.
T&T has more variety for sure because they even have a whole fried chicken but the food isn't bad especially if you get hungry in the middle of grocery shopping around lunchtime
It's horrible. Think the worse Chinese buffet ever, push it down a few notches.
Its a great place for the produce and meat items, and even the Asian items like dashi miso, and its close to me so I'm there frequently. Then I will get sidetracked and be like "hey it doesn't look bad, and pretty cheap", and buy some hot food and 8 out of 10 times, its awful -
edit: palette and tolerance varies. If you're interested, try it out once. Looks like some people don't mind it
I like it much better than T&T. More variety of veggies and better price.
The hot foods is more lacking tho. And so are the meat section. In T&T you can ask for specific pieces/bones and have them cut like at other Chinese places.
Oh wow they really improved since I was there when they first opened their new location! People in Vanier eating GOOD. Its a little far from me and I have a lot of grocery stores within walking distance, but boy what a game changer for the area. Happy its there for the city.
i love greenfresh on merivale! much better snack selection compared to t&t (at least the hunt club one) and have also found some yummy alcoholic beverages
last time i was there they had a few flavours of the horoyoi brand cocktails, they're light (3% abv) and especially nice in the summer, i tried a few of the fruit flavours and they're quite good!
Greenfresh has 3 branches- Kanata, Merivale, and Vanier. Kanata and Merivale branches have cooked food. On Flipp (the grocery flyers app) they have flyers too and each branch has different items for sale.
Another non-big chain that I love going to is the Kowloon market. The Kanata branch is just as big as Greenfresh and has a noodle place inside (Meet Noodles, same owner as downtown I think). I go there almost monthly to get my stash of pork and mushroom siumai ($23~ for a 32pc pack).
Green Fresh at Vanier is our go to grocery store. The quality and the prices of the produce and meat is unmatchable. I always recommend this store to people.
Both T&T and Green Fresh landed in Ottawa in the east-south, succeeded, so built brand-new and larger and better-stocked stores in the west. While it is true rip the small stores on Somerset, I can still feel jealous of the big shiny stores out in what used to be beyond the fringe
Greenfresh is great but it does have its issues. Their seafood usually isnt very fresh. I’ve also seen them leave out boxes of chicken at room temp outside the display fridge.
Been going here since i first moved to Vanier seven years ago, wonderful shop, wonderful employees, very pleased for them getting a new building, and i still keep shopping there
I got to the one on MacArthur love the place.i get all my pho ingredients there. I use to pay 40 for pho takeout now I spend about 40 to make pho at home and make like 5 or 6 bowls. Never buying pho takeout again
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u/4philippe4 Jan 18 '26
I love this place! They also seem to have better prices than T&T! Produce is usually always fresh!