Entering Patidar grocery store is like being in India, you need a tour guide to make sure you know of what you are buying. Luckily I have a few very eager volunteers from my husband's family, who have been giving me mini crash courses on Punjabi/Indian cooking the past year. They shop here because its the largest, most organized and carries the cheapest products that they use for their culinary magic (or that's what my taste buds call their cooking).
I've never seen so many types of rice, beans/lentils and spices. Patidar might be a great place to hunker down at in the event of a zombie apocalypse, they have so much inventory!
I love it that all the spices I use for my own non-Indian cooking are 20% cheaper here. Fresh produce is also 25%-30% cheaper than Wegmans, Shop Rite, Trader Joes or Safeway in the area.
Customer service is excellent. On our last visit we were accidentally charged for 10 boxes of Rasmalai. Rasmalai for those not familiar with Indian foods, its a dessert so sweet, your teeth hurt because of all of that sugar. 10 boxes would be an unrealistic purchase unless you want diabetes, and we had only actually purchased 2 . I didn't catch that on the receipt until we got home. Their phone line was busy the rest of the day, so I sent an email, which they got, and they were so cool about the refund of the difference.
We stock up on Indian spices here to take back to Hawaii, like of how I stock up at Longs back home with yummy Hawaii foods to bring to the mainland.
Parking here, has never been an issue, its surprising, because this store shares a parking lot with a plaza full of stores and small restaurants, but we make it a point not to visit Jersey in the winter so it may be a different situation at that time of the year.
If you live in the North Brunswick or Princeton area in NJ, this is definitely worth checking out for your groceries or Indian specialty cooking needs. read more