Their trail mix is great mixed with a bag of their brazil nuts

aldi has been a revelation for us this year, we started beginning of year, going from a ‘full’ shop at sainsburys, to aldi primarily, and sainsburys for the bits we can’t get.
It’s just msotly all good, only thing we’re buying from Sainsburys now is dog food (fussy hound), and Tomato sauce!

Not mentioned here is frozen fish is excellent, salmon and tuna especially.

What was totally unexpected was I just love the no nonsense shopping experience. Saved me about 30 mins on a weekly shop, £50 a week (family of 4 incl alcohol), and we seem to get better quality goods.

Their ground coffee is not good. Watery and smaller packs work out no cheaper than quality brands in Waitrose. The veg is fair but doesn’t seem to keep as well as Waitrose stuff and the bananas are very expensive compared to Waitrose if trying to buy Fairtrade.

On the plus side they now do a great Wheat beer and their organic baby food fruit sachets are cheaper than energy gels and taste better too.

We’ve also moved over to getting most stuff from Aldi, then everything else from Morrisons down the road. Its great! All the meat is very good. The steaks are always top notch, and miles less than you pay in the other supermarkets. Chorizo and any cooked meats are bloody good as well. The joints of ham are outstanding value for £3 a pop

If you’re having a barby then Aldi Bratwust should be the first thing on your list. They’re bloody gorgeous! They’re burgers are lovely too.

And the wine is outstanding. Try their Argentine Malbec. A personal favourite

the toro loco is a cracking midweek wine 🙂 and the NZ pinot noir is great with just about everything food (except a boeuf bourguignon which you would go for the argie malbec which is also very good)
Gavi is my go-to white
The bottles of st etienne lager that are 79p for a 500cl are surprisingly good (better than the stubbies which aren’t that great tbh), I think they are discontining the line as it’s not listed on the website
steinhauser is good, Schoffenhofer and the ales can’t go wrong with Wainwright for 1.25!
very good port
very good london gin
whisky is a bit meh, the highland black is ok but not punchy enough for my taste, the glen marnoc isn’t worth bothering with
I’m going to try the cognac sometime will report back 🙂

sausages are good, the ones in the white packs are fine, try the lamb joints from the freezer, great to have when there is nothing in

good parmesan (the air dried one) and the mozzarella is cracking. the moser roth 70% chocolate is nice for a treat (or the 85% if you prefer darker)

nappies are good

only thing I’m not a fan of is the pasta, it’s a bit cheap

If fancying a summer drink treat we”ll buy lemons and a few bottles of sparkling water. Squeeze lemon juice into a chilled water – hey presto – a refreshing beverage!

– A good low-fat snack on the go is a fresh carrot. Just eat as is. Same goes with apples.

– I find toilet roll useful in any number of circumstances, especially the obvious.

– Some people like milk in their hot drinks. A container of fresh milk is useful to keep in the fridge. Or UHT for a long shelf life is useful for unnanounced guests.

– you can get bread either whole or sliced. Or those rolls for picnics etc. Add some sliced ham, or cheese and butter or spread – a ‘sandwich’ (like a portable meal)*

* Tin foil is often useful on any list.

Fresh burgers a must!!! Either the fancy ones or even the standard ones good

Fishcakes
the “raddler” beers
Olives
the steam microwave thai chicken curry
the speciality crisps
brioche buns/hotdog rolls
French/english mustard
the hotdogs in glass jars
the ready made mango chicken chilled salad
family sized fresh orange juice not from concentrate
pastrami sanwhich meat
smoked ham (yellow packet)

As well as the stuff already mentioned, they do their version of Soreen Malt Loaf, better than the original IMHO

The Berliner Kindl is a great beer, the Schofferhofer is a good wheat beer, even the cheapo french Brasserie is reasonably tasty for a few cold ones. Ever-changing ales are reasonably priced too. The chicken thigh fillets are good value, the chorizo ring, the Bratwurst, sirloin is tasty too. The ‘super six’ range is always worth picking up a couple of items from and seeing what you can come up with. Pasta is cheap (although not a great range). Pre-prepped salads are worth a look too…

+1 for Beer
Hopping Hare is my all time favorite with a meal

We do our weekly shop there, saves us apprx £40/wk compared to the same shop at Tesco!! The only thing we cannot get on with is their butter, have tried all the different varieties and they are all rubbish so have to resort to one of the other supermarket brands.

Are Aldi still hateful to their employees? (Or is that just Lidl?)

Aldi is regularly voted one of the best companies to work for

Wine
Beer
Bacon
Dishwasher tablets
Axe
Rubber gloves
Compressor
Chicken breasts
Nappies

Can I add granola and any of their chocolate to the list? And 12 bottles of assorted ales for £14.

Their cornflakes used to be rank, may have improved since I last risked it.

Kooliburra white wine.
Cambala White wine.
Meatster wee pepperami style sausage snacks.
Fruit n Fibre and Special K copy cereals.
Mature cheddar.
Frikadellan burgers.
Ground coffee is fine.
All fruit n Veg.
Asia Specialities Noodles
Basmati rice.
Dry roasted peanuts.
All their yoghurts that I’ve had a good.
Lawn “Feed n Seed”. lol

Agree with most of the comments above – when we moved three years ago we began to use the Aldi just found the corner and fo the vast majority of our good shopping there. One thing I like over other supermarkets is the check out system which is far quicker than the mind numbing wait we experience in our local tesco and asda and the willingness of staff to quickly open an additional check out if queues are building up.

We had a new Aldi open nearby recently and I shop there99% of the time only going to Morrisons for the stuff I can’t get like wholemeal pasta, brown rice, etc. I spend a fortune on fruit in there and the large packs of chicken breasts are not only cheap but very tasty (and the breasts are very large 😉 ). The only thing I don’t like is stuff like the raisins are all injected with sunflower oil and ready meals are seriously high in fats. When you compare to branded stuff a lot of it is pretty unhealthy (have a look at the fat/sugar/salt/etc values in the Dairylea alternative compared to the branded stuff) but generally it’s awesome.

Also I always have a multipack of water in my car now, pack of 12 500ml bottles is about £2 which comes in handy all the time when you just want to grab a bottle!

If no one has mentioned it yet. Get the chocolate brioche loaf they do. It’s awesome. Will walk into town just to pick one up

Made an increasingly frequent stop at Aldi today after shopping at John Lewis and boots for baby stuff. So I’ll be taking back the £9 cellular blanket to John Lewis (Aldi £2.50, made in China pure cotton – same as JL) and pending tests stop buying pampers nappies online (9p each) and buy Aldi’s own award-winning nappies (6p each). Same goes for wipes. Also chanced a rib eye steak and Williams Bros Perfect Storm. I love it. It looks like it’ll be rubbish but they just don’t have infinite unnecessary choices of the big supermarkets.

It was announced last week that our local co-op (Scotmid) will become an Aldi later this year. Absolutely gutted for the staff, but guiltily excited that we’ll have an Aldi more or less on our doorstep.

Scotmid staff will hopefully be offered jobs with a reputedly top employer, so win-win!

We have developed a love of their cans of lager shandy. Perfect on a summers evening when you can’t get drunk properly.

I hope so Jimmy.

They had cycling stuff on special buy last week but more importantly massive boxes of nappies and decking oil. I love Aldi. They seem to know what I need week to week.

So if the steaks are good – do they have in BBQ’s in to cook them on?

Yes

Loads is good and loads is shit.
I can however recommend the 2L tubs of Cornish Vanilla Ice Cream- proper good stuff.

Sorry to resurrect this but the Spicy Jalapeno Coleslaw has proved a revelation in my lunchtime cheese and ham sarnie… 😯

Am I the only person to lose the will to live when stepping inside Aldi? I only go there for coffee, the interior is depressing with its gloomy lighting so I literally run in and run faster out.

Wow cinnamon I go the shops to buy food not to hang out. Still each to their own.

Back to waitrose CG!

😆

Asda this morning, Waitrose is over-rated and full of rude but rich people, farm shops are a nicer experience.

Regarding the checkouts in Aldi, they have to open another checkout if they get 2 units beyond the end of the belt.

2 units is 2 lots of shopping. So one person shopping alone would be one unit, whereas a family of 4 with one lot of shopping would also be one unit so it doesn’t go off the number of persons waiting.

Think they have a system where they have one or two staff on tills with others out on the shopfloor as back up.

Also they have to get a certain amount of items through each checkout per hour. I used to secret shop there so I had to know how they worked.

Simmy, that has to be the dullest post of all time. well done.

Chorizo, Red Wine (Torro Locco under £4 wins awards), Fruit & Veg. Love Aldi, but the coffee is dreadful.

Just to say that I don’t ‘hang out’ in supermarkets, just rather everyone else would bugger off to leave me in peace.

#miserablecah

Like everyone else we only started buying toilet rolls and none branded stuff, but as time as passed pretty much try and buy everything there, the Norpack butter, the chocolate, the wine, even some beer, the meat, fish, seafood, veg all fine and half the price of Waitrose, the other store in town. Only snag the council charge to park so you risk a ticket, whereas in the next town Lidl is free.

However you do have to work around the six fingered banjo players with their two headed kids up from the Marsh and it is a bit low light depressing as CG so aptly puts it, but sinking your teeth into their eating liquorice puts that all behind you.

Oh and did I mention their chocolate with hazlenuts in it? Thing of the past now thanks to the dietfest.

Currently working through a packet of their own Fruit and Nut Chocolate. Found the Run Fruit and Nut a bit too sweet, but it was worth a try…..

Simmy, that has to be the dullest post of all time. well done.

And yet, yours managed to be even duller. Well done.

I don’t think I’ve ever been in Aldi (or Lidl) other than for a quick nosey when they first opened, and I wasn’t impressed. On the back of this thread I might give them a go next time I do a weekly shop. Cheers.