Supermarket Sampler

The Ottawa Citizen
Wednesday, October 15, 2003
Page: E5
Section: Food
Byline: Ron Eade
Source: The Ottawa Citizen
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New products on the shelves

Cora's convenience

Cora's Breakfast & Lunch restaurants are branching out into grocery stores with a line of pre-made Cora pies, available at 32 Loeb stores in Ontario. (Cora's pies were previously available at more than 350 IGA/Sobeys and Metro Richelieu stores in Quebec.) Quiches and pot pies are made according to Cora's recipes. (Yes, there really is a Cora Tsouflidou. She lives in Quebec.) At 750 grams each, the pies are deeper and larger than similar ones sold in supermarkets. Retail prices are between $5.99 and $6.99 each. We tried Cora's tourtiere, and were impressed by the meaty texture and pleasant taste -- better than most frozen tourtieres that have the consistency of, well, canned cat food. We also enjoyed the taste of Cora's Chicken Broccoli and Ham Asparagus quiches, although the bottom crust seemed a bit soggy. The crust on her Chicken Pot Pie was better, however.

Special reserve blend

And we're not talking about wine, either. Starbucks introduces its Special Reserve Estate and Special Reserve Blend coffees, billed as "the finest coffees of 2003 without a doubt." The coffees blend the finest flavours from Sumatra, Kenya
and Guatemala. We set loose our coffee tasters, who typically enjoy full-bodied brews. The Starbucks Reserve Blend, although very good, was judged to be a bit acidic and not as full-bodied as, say, coffee from Bridgehead, or from Francesco's Guatemala-French Blend (from Francesco's Coffee Co. Inc. in Westboro), or Chez Piggy Blend No. 2 from Cook's General Store in Kingston (just to name some). At more than $20 a pound, the Starbucks special stuff is very, very expensive -- much more than the others.