Never really shop there but they just opened a new one not far from me so I stopped by to buy my kids pumpkins... I noticed they had twin packs of Jaffa Cakes for $1.99, they were not as good as Mcvitites but they were a nice substitute... yum yum.

It's 'German week' again in Aldi this week - Mrs tonrob is absolutely beside herself. I came home yesterday and was startled to discover a wall of German bread preventing access to the kitchen.

They will also sell tons of European chocolate. Things rammed full of hazlenuts and whatnot. Take a gander at the cheeses and sausage too - often imported.

Are they ever in a sensible town though?

Our local one I think is in Milford, it's a shit hole...and what's the deal of not accepting debit cards? or was that credit card transactions?

They do have some cracking good deals though, but not enough to warrant a special trip that far out.

I went to one quite awhile back on the outskirts of Chicago and was not impressed at all, so I never went to the local one. It was about 6 miles away in the next town south.

Jump ahead 7 years and I'm living in the county seat of a farming community and hear through the grapevine that the local Aldi is clean and well run but just okay...sometimes they have nice produce. I stop in and surprise, they have all kinds of great imported stuff that many of the locals aren't really too bothered about (more for us). I need to stop in this weekend...thanks for the reminder.

We've got a couple of Aldi's near us,Idon't like them either,but they do have some great imported food in there...course I've got the German version of the Jaffa cakes!,and a few years ago they were selling Irish sausages(I was just about beside myself!),and the Euro chocs are lovely!,they very often have a good supply of imported food,well worth the visit....never buy the 'fresh' produce in there though!

We stopped in today and found a few of the goodies already mentioned. And Mr. Tamms found some mulled wine. If it's good we're going back to stock up. I also thought I'd try the German prosciutto on special....we'll see.

I passed one yesterday and bought some of the Jaffa cakes and also some of the 'petit ecolier' type chocolate biscuits. Now those are really yummy. I would have bought more stuff but I was expecting to be able to get a basket inside and there were none. I tried to get back outside to get a trolley but the 'in' doors wouldn't open from the inside and I could not be bothered to go all the way through the shop just to get a trolley and come back in again.

Nice thing about ours is that they have the aisles open. The one I went to in Chicago wasn't like that. Maybe they have to ours open because of the fire code here....don't know.

I love my 'local' Aldi, even if its a pain in the arse to get to.

$150 worth of Shoprite shopping for arund $80... can't complain!!

I got nostalgic just putting my quarter in to release the trolley then getting it back when I returned it LOL.

Just discovered a new Aldi nr Charlotte - bought loads of stuff. Has loads of European style crackers, of course the jaffa cakes, the choccie biscuits and loads of great deals.. My new favourite along with Trader Joes

Funny you should mention TJ's....I was wondering yesterday if they don't get some of their own label stuff from the same processors. I noticed the pesto, vodka sauce, roasted red peppers, etc. They look similar except for the labels. I bought some of the red peppers to make this feta cheese spread I like so I'll be able to compare. If it's good, I'm going to try the red sauces and pesto next time I'm there.

In the UK they don't accept credit cards, bebit cards are OK. Even here in the UK we buy quite a lot at ALDI and LIDL, most of their goods are very good copies of the branded goods, in fact they are made by many of the top manufacturers, just rebranded.

If you see these, check them out:

Normally 79c a packet where I am and they don't taste that bad compared to the real thing.