Wednesday, February 29, 2012

A small, Cyprus-style warehouse with flour and nuts

On our way back from Agia Napa last week, I saw that we would be driving very near to a warehouse which friends had suggested we might visit. They found it recently on the recommendation of other friends... this is how many things work in Cyprus. We knew that it was a small place that didn't actually look like a warehouse, on a corner of the road where Sarris supermarket is.

We also knew that it was open to the public, and sold very good value nuts of various kinds as well as flour, dried fruit, and various other items. I was intrigued.

So we drove slowly along the road in question, looking at all the street corners, until we spotted it:


The name, according to the receipt I have, is (in English letters) Patroklos Chrysostomou Ltd.

It didn't look at all like a warehouse on the outside, but we quickly realised that there were two parts. First we went into a rather crowded small shop with some conveniently pre-bagged nuts, raisins, seeds, and so on, and also some places to scoop most of these items for oneself into bags, at a slightly better price.

I don't tend to remember prices very well, but had made a note of the best value almonds I had previously found (a little under 9 euros per kilogram at the froutaria) - and these were less still, with the locally grown ones at 6.75 euros per kilo - significantly less. Since we prefer to buy locally grown produce whenever we can, we bought some. We bought some cashews, walnuts and raisins too, also rather better value than we could buy elsewhere.

Then we wandered out into what appeared to be a garage at the back of the shop where there were large flour sacks on the floor, and various other items around. We didn't want to spend very long there - it was already after our usual lunch-time and I was feeling decidedly hungry - but I did ask if they had any wholewheat flour - what we saw all appeared to be white. One man told me in broken English that they were ALL whole wheat, but some of them had the 'shells' taken away. I suppose he meant that they didn't contain anything other than wheat, but even the one which he said still had the 'shells' in looked much whiter than our usual wholegrain flour.

Since the sight of flour sacks, open to the air (and thus potentially any insects...) wasn't all that appealing, and it's not as if we use THAT much flour anyway, we didn't investigate further. But I think we'll be returning to this place in the future...

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