Kamaole Sands Direct

One of the great things about vacationing in our Maui condo is being able to use our gourmet kitchen. In prior posts, I’ve mentioned the the fresh fruits and vegetables available at the Saturday swap meet in Kahului, but if you plan on whipping up an island meal or two, you’ll probably need a few more supplies than you can there.

For grocery purchases in Kihei, you basically have three or three and a half choices, depending on how you want to count.

Let’s start with “the half”‘; Long’s Drugstore. For a lot neighborhoods in the islands, Long’s (now part of CVS) is the local–within walking distance–general store. In Kihei, they offer a pretty basic, but surprisingly diverse collection canned goods, cereals, bakery and dairy items and even some produce. I’ve found the greens are usually not the best looking garden offerings you’ll see, but for the basics they’ve generally got you covered. Also, the Long’s liquor department often has some of the better deals on wine, beer and other spirits.

In the true supermarket category, let’s start with my overall favorite, Foodland. The Kihei store is a bit smaller than some, so if you’re looking for truffle oil or semolina flour, you’re probably out of luck, but the overall selection is not bad. The bakery’s OK, fresh fish is usually pretty good and on most days, the produce is fresh and well-stocked. Day in and day out, I find Foodland offers the best grocery value. Their Maika`i (Hawaiian for excellent) frequent shopper programs provides good weekly deals on a variety of common items and snacks and for every $250 you spend, you’ll get a 5%-off coupon. My other reason for hitting Foodland is the wine department. On the vino aisle, you’ll find a fairly broad, not overly pretentious, decent selection of the grape.

Next on my list is Times Market (formerly Star). Times is where you want to go if you’re still looking for that truffle oil. The store has more SKUs than almost any other supermarket I’ve ever been in. Times’ produce and bakery departments are pretty good and the dairy case and deli counter offer a bit diversity than you’ll find at Mr. Sullivan’s Foodland. I’ve never been impressed with Star’s meat counter, but maybe that’s just me. The down side of Star is that I find it to just be more expensive.

Head mauka to hit Safeway, the last of the Kihei supermarket options. Things have gotten a bit better, but when the store first opened, I could never find anything that said I was shopping in Hawai`i. No 20 lb. bags of Hinode, no Roselani ice cream, no Aloha Maid soft drinks. Kihei or Kookamonga? It’s sometimes hard to tell. I suppose that does make Safeway the ’safe’ choice;  bakery and produce are pretty good, but I guess I’m just more into the ‘local’ shopping experience.

Enough said. Go get those grinds and make something ono!