Lunch @ Capers + Safeway

Capers Community Market
4 Locations in Metro Vancouver
1675 Robson Street (Location visited)
Vancouver, BC

Back when I first moved to Canada, for a while, I was living a friend. During the first couple of weeks, I tagged with him and his family to do a lot of things, including, of course, grocery shopping. There, I was able to observe a lot of things, most importantly, prices of most groceries I would need eventually. We went to several local markets, as well as major larger supermarkets, like Superstore, Safeway, T&T and so on. When I moved out to Downtown Vancouver, there were only two major supermarkets, Capers and Safeway. My first weekend, when I went out to buy groceries, I went to Capers. After all, it is part of the “discovery” process. While I was walking through the isles, the only thing that came to my mind was merde! (Which is more surprising, specially since I do not speak French…).

Whereas a half gallon/1.84L of soy milk would cost $3.50 (all prices are Canadian Dollars) in Superstore, $4 in Safeway or T&T, here, it would easily cost $1.50 more. And, I am not talking about organic what-not, it was the same brand soy milk… I was on the verge of promising myself not to walk in again this place, if it was not for some unique items they had… (Oh, on that note, my perception of Safeway is not that different, just to a lesser extent). Anyway, I moved out of Downtown long time ago so I had no reason to go to Capers, as there are none nearby, anyway. But, now that I work in Downtown Vancouver, at least I could go there for lunch…

Lunch? In a supermarket? Well, as most large supermarket chains, they also have a section with salads, sandwiches, baked goods and so on. In the case of Capers, they also had self-serve soups. After debating a while on all these, I ended up getting…

That is a Thai lentil soup. Yes, I am a sucker for lentils so I had to order it out of the three soups they had. In a way, I automatically got this one, so I don’t remember what else they had! ^_^;;; To go along with this soup, I had this:

A piece of quiche. It was still slightly fluffy but couldn’t really taste that much of the ingredients. And the crust was, well, I wished it was similar to a pie crust but here it was a bit mushy. (sigh). Overall, I was disappointed with the whole lunch, specially the price variable is taken into account. The lunch was $9 and given all the options in the area, I could do a lot better. For example, for an extra loonie (or CDN $1 for non-Canadians), get some fish and chips…

So, a couple of days later, following this trend, I went to Safeway for lunch. I must mention this location was remodeled and re-opened about a month or so ago. However, unlike my lunch in Capers, I was in a rush so I just something to take out. In this case:

One of the improvements in this Safeway (which is available in other locations but not all) is a cafeteria-type area. Here, they will prepare sandwiches to order and that is what I ordered:

OK, just kidding!

When ordering it, I was not expecting too much so I don’t remember the exact name. It had chicken (real white meat chicken chunks, mind you! Probably from leftover roasted chickens?) and bacon, along with some guacamole. And, in the same trend as Quizno’s, they toast the sandwich before wrapping it. However, the oven used is similar to the ones found in Subways.

I found it was better than expected, specially, if we add the price factor in. It was just under $6 (plus a loonie, if you want a can of pop/soda and chips). Would I come back? I might if I am looking for a quick, cheap lunch. Otherwise, there are still a lot other options in the area…

Tagged under: Downtown • Lunch • Sandwich • Soup