Supermarkets in Bangkok – International Food in Thailand

When you move to a new country one of the first things you (or is it just me?!) worry about is whether you will be able to find the food stuffs you love from home. I spend the months leading up to my departure stuffing my face with all the things that I thought I wouldn’t be able to get back home, only to arrive and realize that pretty much everything you want you can get here, with one or two exceptions. It might be painful to spend 200 baht on a pack of biscuits, but when you can get chicken and rice for 35 baht, it all balances out.

Pretty much all supermarkets will sell a good range of fruit, veg and basics so I will focus on imported things. One thing to remember is that versions of your favourite food might taste completely different here, so you will need to adapt your expectations (and not, ahem, have a tantrum about a BLT sandwich).

Tops Market

There are Tops supermarkets all over town, some as stand-alone stores and some in Robinson’s department store or Central Malls. Being the biggest supermarket chain in Thailand means it’s a great place to find those things you miss from home. They stock products from Australia, the UK and America. One of the brands they are in partnership with is Waitrose from the UK. Something that is ridiculously expensive here is Marmite, at around 400 baht (8 pounds) for a jar. Larger Tops supermarkets also have a great bakery, with delicious offerings like rye bread, bagels and pitta bread; they also have great cooking stations where you can pick up ready to go mashed potatoes, roast beef and sausages. These bigger branches will also have a good range of home baking ingredients.

Foodland

Foodland is open 24 hours a day, every day of the year. You can even go there tipsy on Christmas day, which is pretty novel! There are currently a dozen or so Foodland Supermarkets around Bangkok, another great place to buy to buy western goodies alongside your daily shop. Western stuff that I love here includes hummus, guacamole, Arnotts mint slices, cranberry juice and Weetabix. What I really like about Foodland in Bangkok is that alongside all the western products is a good range of Thai goods at great value: yoghurt, cheese, vegetables and fruit.

Villa Market

This was the original expat supermarket in Bangkok and is still a favourite amongst the expat crew, because despite only having a few stores it has some hard to find items (crumpets!) and a good selection of wine. It’s a good place to come around festive periods, as they are likely to have some more unusual ingredients and dishes you might be missing from home. This year they even had imported Christmas trees all the way from Europe, but given that they cost 10,000 baht we passed. Upstairs at the Sukhumvit branch is a wine den that apparently sometimes sells bottles at bargain prices, but sadly I have never visited at the time of one of these secret sales!