15 Comments
User's avatar
Mama Ain't Playin''s avatar

Grocery tourism is at least half the reason we stay in Air B&Bs instead of hotels now. It’s fun to pretend you’re a normal civilian in another country, seeing it through their supermarkets.

Golden Eye's avatar

Isn't it fun. The only way to travel :)

Liz King-Jabs's avatar

One of my favorite things about traveling

Golden Eye's avatar

Totally. Forget landmarks. I want to know what people put on toast :)

Claudia McGill's avatar

Whenever my parents came to visit my dad always wanted to go to the grocery store and just stroll around looking things over. He always did the food shopping for our family and he liked to see what stores were like in other cities and states.

Golden Eye's avatar

Your dad was clearly a man of impeccable priorities :)

Ephie's avatar

While I’m not a fan of many of the Swedish tubed food, Biggans Böcklingpastej is the exception. It’s delicious on good quality knäckebröd.

Golden Eye's avatar

I will have to check it out!

avalancheGenesis's avatar

Oh gosh - I've worked at [grocery store] for 8 years, and only one time ever out of many thousands of interactions have I heard someone else call it "fish fingers". But the name stuck, so that's what I call them now too. Chuffed to find it's not just an isolated corrupted term, but rather a regionalism! Clear success of grocery linguistic tourism.

Asian markets are my favourite ones to browse endlessly, despite being descended from the Far East myself. Such a strange blend of weird-by-American-lights confections (frozen bone-in farm-raised alligator! cheese flavoured instant ramen! durian potato chips!), then you go to the equivalent of the Ethnic Foods aisle and it has WonderBread, Cheerios, Campbell's. Best part of course is that many of the labels have no, or very bad English, so I'm not really sure what I'm eating until it's in my mouth. All part of the fun!

Pam B's avatar

My husband is in consumer goods, so we are always going to new grocery store chains in the US and abroad. I always check out the salad dressing aisle and heath care aisles. You always need snacks, drinks and the occasional cold medicine!

Golden Eye's avatar

You have elevated grocery tourism to a professional discipline. I wholeheartedly agree :)

Charlie Sanders's avatar

Love the article! Would you be willing to share the prompts and model you used?

Golden Eye's avatar

Absolutely. The model was created in Sydney, Australia by a criminal defence barrister of some note and a passionate, animal activist. The prompts arose from an afternoon tea in Leura fuelled by tea from Mariage Freres and a berry and frangipani tart from Bakehouse on Wentworth.

Charlie Sanders's avatar

Fair enough! The technology’s now good enough to catch it quite reliably, just in case you weren’t aware.

Golden Eye's avatar

Actually it's not. I work in publishing and at university and a well written piece can often show up as AI generated for the temerity to use well constructed sentences peppered with imagery. https://gptzero.me/news/why-writing-flagged-ai/