aldi advice please.......

[linconlass]

please can anyone tell me what is good to buy at aldi and what isnt ..thankyou !!

Good:
Large free range chicken for a fiver.
59p fruit and veg offers.
Lacuna beauty products (day & night moisturisers)
Brooklea West County yoghurts - ridiculously yum (but made with whipped cream and fat galore)
Nice selection of pesto's etc.

Grim:
Freeze dried coffee
Fruit squash

I don't shop there often as the ranges are limited, but will whizz in for my good list above.

Rice, pasta, their version of Lurpak, steak mince, fruit and veg, stollen, chocolate crunch cereal, milk, cream, smoked salmon, salad, washing powder, fabric conditioner. Most stuff is good to be honest, but their range is quite small. I like that though because I can whizz round quickly.

any more - ? thanks x

parmesan
most of their stuff seems quite good tbh.
Pouches of wet cat food
Mini cornettos

Large free range eggs are only 99p for a box of 6. Their chocolate is nice too. In fact I always stop at Aldi on my way to Tesco and buy what I can there. It's Tesco's loss.

Ooh yes dark chocoalte with orange and almonds - even DS loves it. and its in 5 small wrapped bars so you don;t have to scoff the whole lot.

Good = washing powder
Bad - fabric softener
good - boxes of salmon
bad - bags of salmon
good - the rest of the frozen fish
bad - stewing meat
good - dairy, cereals, oils, pasta, rice, fruit and veg, frozen veg, jarred olives.
bad - processed frozen goods, jarred sauces.
good - some beers.

Wine is great...bagels good. Veg is much better than at our sainsburys or tesco. Baby wipes are AMAZING..Kitchen cleaner great..Aldi rocks

Oh and good - frozen lamb shanks in mint..yum

Two years ago Aldi had the Holy Grail of Christmas snacks- Macadamia nuts in their shells! I have never seen them anywhere since, not even in Aldi :(
Their cream cheese is gorgeous, nicer than Philly. Potato gratin in a packet is yummy and cheap. We buy loads from there actually!

Their german christmas stuff is great (gingerbread houses, stollen, lebkuchen, glühwein etc) and much cheaper than the rip-off christmas markets.

Sometimes their fresh fruit can be a bit grim, but generally for basics it is excellent. I used to shop there a lot, but I now have 2 ds's with multiple allergies and they don't really do anything which caters for their diets.

I bought a gingerbread house for DD yesterday. They also do a gingerbread train.

bulgarian (or maybe hungarian...) Merlot was nice.
veg is good, cerials good, cerial bars good, free range chickens good, moisteriser gave me spots (and i never usually get spots), cheeses good, posh yoghurts lovely, baking stuff decent.
Beware of bad tempered sullen staff who will scowl and scan shopping super fast to make a point if you dont want to do the insane Hurl Shopping Directly into Trolley routine at the checkout. Pack into bags at the till at your peril

They are not as cheap as they used to be, they are trading on their (out of date) reputation.
They are good for some things (think traditional German goods so deli, stollen, lebkuchen, etc) but their queues are awful so not a place to 'pop in'.
Also, for a place that is supposed to cater for the poorer end of the market, I think that it is bad that their fresh fruit & veg only comes in pre-packs so you can't buy just one or two of things.

no queues at ours and good fruit and beg (though limited choice)

Ours is brilliant. I went on Tuesday morning and it was very quiet and the checkout girl was very friendly and chatty.

It is a fairly new store and does not have a downmarket feel about it at all.

German beer

Totally Tropical muesli - as good as Dorset Cereals IME. Nutty and berry mueslis also good.

Brioche slabs with custard, mmm

Their version of "Eat Natural" bars

Agree about their version of Lurpak being lovely

Fruit and veg are fantastic, lots of packaging though.

I usually pick up one random item each time to try, things are usually either rubbish or surprisingly good.

The "don't pack at the tills" thing is always annoying, though. The faster the staff go, the slower I get. When I was heavily pregnant a fella on the till tried to hurry me along and I hissed "I can't bend over the trolley so you will have to be patient." Then he had to sit there fuming while I did the slowest pack ever and let DD "help" :)

I fail to see how much time it saves, particularly for elderly or infirm (or pregnant) customers.