The next time someone tells me that Portland’s OK but it’s not very cosmopolitan, or raves that their former home had a wider variety of “ethnic” food and restaurants, I think I’m going to force them into the Food4Less at SE 82nd & Powell where I took this shot of some durian fruit in the produce section.
“Pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock” is how travel writer Richard Sterling described the smell. Even the uncut fruits smell so bad they’re banned from public transport in notoriously rigid Singapore (where the sign gives them equal standing with smoking, eating and drinking, and flammamable goods), although I have to admit I didn’t smell them from a few feet away in the Food4Less.
The part I liked best about it was that the sign in the store notes that they’re eleven cents cheaper there than “SUPERMARKET PRICE”. And I have to ask exactly which supermarket they’re thinking of. They’re sure not at Fred Meyer’s or Safeway.