Andrew Zimmern's Top Tip For Upgrading Your Grocery Store Experience

There's no denying that groceries are costing more. The Wall Street Journal reports that prices have hit a 40-year high thanks to inflation. The squeeze is especially tough on the prices of everyday staples like milk and bread, and many people are responding by buying less at their local supermarkets these days, according to Axios.

There are many ways to stretch your grocery store dollars, however. Once considered an old-lady pass time, coupon clipping has become a cool new activity, according to The Baltimore Banner – a true sign of the times — although The New York Times also reports that finding coupons today is harder than ever.

After learning to stockpile during the pandemic (toilet paper, anyone?), people are also leaning into bulk shopping, according to Marketplace, and memberships at warehouse stores like Costco are up 13%. Costco members can also save a few dollars by filling up at Costco gas stations.

If you love cooking, but need to save some money, in addition to clipping coupons and stockpiling the pantry, consider thinking like a chef. After all, food cost percentages are the numbers by which all local kitchens live and die (per Toast), and who better to know where to get the best buys than the folks who do all the ordering? Chefs are great at sourcing unusual ingredients to come up with the next best menu item, and nobody knows about finding offbeat items better than Andrew Zimmern, the host of Travel Channel's "Bizarre Foods."

Andrew Zimmern has been a chef since the 1980s, according to his website, first working in New York City for chefs like Anne Rosenzweig, Joachim Splichal, and Thomas Keller before later getting into food television and radio programming. The chef went on to win multiple James Beard Awards for Outstanding TV Food Personality for his shows "Andrew Zimmern's Bucket List," "Andrew Zimmern's Driven by Food," and "Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern," (per The Food Network). Along his impressive culinary career, he's picked up quite a few tips and tricks for food shopping, but his top piece of advice for elevating your grocery store experience is to shop at your local Asian and Mexican grocery stores.

Zimmern has long touted the virtues of shopping at international food markets in interviews, articles, as well as his "Spilled Milk" newsletter (via The Kitchn). He even made an entire educational video on the subject (via Alexander Street), where he took viewers on a tour of his local Mexican, Asian, and Italian grocery stores. On the tour, he said that these markets are, "A fabulous way to discover the diverse cultures and cuisines of many countries. And therefore, it's a place to get high-quality ingredients at a great price and with a fabulous selection."

International food stores are a great way to source meat and produce at much lower prices than big supermarkets. As an added bonus, you can expand your palate at the same time. Fruits and veggies you might use all the time like mustard greens and bok choy, garlic and shallots, apples and oranges are all typically less expensive at Mexican and Asian markets than at your nearest big chain store, and there are often major savings on meats and spices. You can also find cuts of meat that aren't typically sold at regular grocery stores, like beef skirt steak and whole pork belly. 

While you're at your local ethnic market, you'll also see a lot of ingredients that you'd never find at a regular American supermarket or grocery store, like specialty greens and grains, packaged noodles and dumplings, tortilla masa for making homemade tortillas, hot sauces, dried mushrooms, and chiles — all kinds of interesting ingredients that Zimmern says are as common in other cultures as ketchup is to Americans. "You'll find exciting, popular items used each day in the kitchens and on the tables of other people all around the world," Zimmern says in his video. "You'll see why these honest, authentic markets have the best quality of products and the best value available."