Bangla-City

I got some great snacks here — dried spicy chick peas, dall chana and crunchy savories. Very well priced. A nifty market.

This is a fantastic supermarket for buying all you need to make awesome Curries — amongst other great Asian Dishes.
Don’t let the name fool you, Bangladeshi are not the only dishes you can produce from the goodies here; they also stock S.E.Asian Ingredients too!
They have onions the size of my head, seriously, they are massive!
Oh, you can buy bags of frozen samosa’s — these are pretty tasty & very handy to have in your freezer!
As well as getting all your spices and essential ingredients in small (50gm) bags/​tubs right up to extra large (10kg!!)bags/tubs, you can buy cooking utensils, pestle & mortars (much cheaper than the ones in John Lewis and the likes) and lots of interesting serving dishes.
They also stock toilet roll, milk, crisps, bin bags, biscuits etc.
Staff are very friendly, always willing to help you find those ingredients that you can’t pronounce & have never actually seen before (new cookbook maybe?). They also help you pack your shopping if needed.
There is free parking out the front if you have a car — excellent!
Believe me, it is funky stuff!

I WISH that I lived close to this supermarket.
It has everything I want: spiced tea in 40 or 80 bag boxes, dried beans and peas, a fairly decent variety of herbs and spices, and, unbelievably, Dove unscented bar soap. (It’s gotta be unscented.)
Even though South Asia isn’t known for its hummus, B-​City even stocks tahini. I can pretty much find all the fixins for my hummus recipe here under one roof. And, that really is something to say in this town.
Another bonus is being just around the corner from Brick Ln. and all that it offers. Just before or after I stock up on chickpeas and the like, I usually pop over to Rough Trade Record Shop (um, dated-​sounding much?) for a flat white and a sit-​down. If the music in Rough Trade isn’t too cranking, then the bevvie goes down well.

Large Indian/​Pakistani/​Bangladeshi supermarket off Brick Lane. If you are looking for ingredients for a curry or some other dish from the sub-​continent this shop will almost certainly be able to provide them. The place looks a bit tired, but the prices are also commensurately cheap. We ended up buying a nice assortment of chutneys, lentils, and spices for a very reasonable amount. It’s certainly worth checking this out if you are in the area.

I prefer this store over the nearby Taj store for the reason that its cheaper than its rival and its less crowded. As I hate being jostled in narrow aisles. Anyway this supermarket sells all the staple ingredients needed to make (Indian) food. I must confess I am a fan of their packet mixes such as Uttapam as I prefer pre measured ingredients which I can simply make up and cook!
I love looking at the unusual ingredients such as betel nuts and henna even though I have no intention of buying but you learn so much about people through what they buy. There is a frozen food counter and a butchery counter at the back of the store. Which I simply passed on by.

Bangla-​City is a supermarket. The sign above the door proclaims ‘Continental Supermarket’ but whereas there’s a tendency on this Isle to associate ‘continental’ with the breakfasts and France and that, this continent is the Sub. And this supermarket is basically full of what would normally be resigned to the ‘ethnic’ aisle in mainstream supermarkets.
So, you’re looking at incredible ranges of hot sauces, any spice you could dream of (in almost any quantity, clearly Bangla-​City stocks restaurants too), loads of fresh fruit and vegetables, all things like rice, lentils, flours, a whole section devoted to frozen fish, and in house butcher. You get the picture.
I love cooking curries. Can I recommend Mae Ploy’s genuine Thai cooking pastes, make THE most amazing Thai Green Curry pretty easy with this stuff. Basically, this place is so big, you just wander aimlessly thinking «ooh, I need some turmeric», or «Chana daal, that’s what I’ll eat tonight», at least I do.
Come here, stock up, and eat delicious curries and hot stuff for the rest of the month. Well recommended!