Posted by Paul Wernick in asian, grocery, shops on October 11, 2007 at 8:05 am

T&T Supermarket
222 Cherry Street
416-463-8113

I came to T & T for the duck tongues and stayed for the pig stomachs. And the chicken feet. And the quail eggs. T&T, inevitably described as the Chinese Loblaws, opened its first downtown store in August on Cherry Street at the former Knob Hill Farms location.

For foodies, T&T is Chinatown under one roof without the smell of rotting vegetables. It’s gleaming, antiseptic aisles hold thousands of Asian food products as well as Western staples. Where to start? The seafood section alone is worth a visit: there are tanks brimming with tilapia, pickerel and eel. All of them seem lively, even downright feisty.

The fish on ice look remarkably healthy as well. With a few words of encouragement and a tickle on the belly, these guys could squirm back to life. I have never seen such a colourful display of piscine splendor: sea bream, strawberry grouper, tie fish, green bass, white bass. And don't forget the croaker, a pretty fish with an unpleasant name. Go on, take one home. They will clean it for you here at no charge.

And check out the obscene-looking geoduck clams while you are at it. They are flown in from the West Coast. Scary, but tasty I’m told. Live conches await your pleasure. They can be turned into musical instruments, can't they? T&T is crawling with live crabs and lobsters and a dizzying assortment of exotic shellfish; if you want to disobey the Book of Deuteronomy, this is the place to go.

As for red meat, T&T's skilled butcher will wield his cleaver to give customers just about any cut of meat they want, and I mean any cut. The prices are comparable to or better than the established chains. Many of the cuts are pre-marinated and ready for the barbeque, wok or George Foreman grill.

Sections of the store are devoted to Vietnamese, Philiipine, Korean and Japanese products, Asian food is represented from the Bay of Bengal to the South China Sea - although I didn’t see any of my favourite crunchy wasp crackers. Now, I have absolutely no idea how to deal with many of the items stocked at T&T, but a lot of ready-to-serve meals are available at the gourmet counter for those leery of cooking with abalone or wood-ear fungus. And it’s comforting to know that should I suddenly need some dried fish maws - or even a package of Eggos - the store is open until 10pm every night.

Germaphobes can dine at their leisure in the dim-sum and barbeque food court. The servers all wear surgical masks and rubber gloves. After 8pm, the prices at the sushi bar are drastically slashed. The bakery produces both Western and Asian baked goods: Black Forest Cake and taro buns. I recommend the delightful pumpkin seed cookies.

On a negative note, T&T is not in a particularly transit-friendly location. Nor is organic produce much in evidence. And a huge supermarket with hundreds of parking spaces is not what I would consider waterfront renewal. Things could have been worse, though. The site is leased from Docks Nightclub owner Jerry Sprackman, who really wanted to put up a casino or big box development on the site. Right now a supermarket is the only approved use for the former Knob Hill Farms building.

Chief Executive Officer Cindy Lee started T&T with just one store. The are now sixteen in Canada, five of them in the G.T.A. One T stands for Tawa Supermarkets Inc., a California- based Asian supermarket chain, the other T stand for Tung Yee Corporation, a Taiwanese conglomerate. They are the major shareholders in the enterprise and are joined by some Canadian investors.

Who knows? Maybe Galen Weston of Loblaws is one of them.