I love in Toronto and my girlfriend is going to school in philly. Every time she visits she brings up treats from TJ's
There's a chilli-lime spice shaker, and an "everything bagen seasoning" shaker. I've never seen either of those combinations in a single shaker. If I wanted to make either of these at home from constituent parts it would actually be challenging. (powdered lime is really hard to find, maybe not as much for everything bagel)
The chili lime is amazing on popcorn by the way.
Anyways - the thing that makes TJ's so special is if you go into the store there are hundreds of things that you've never seen anywhere else interesting and experimental flavor combinations etc... on top of that, the prices are reasonable instead of "gouging". (possibly cheap, but I haven't shopped there enough to make that claim).
There is no shop in Canada quite like it - but that's because we're dominated by the "big-box-grocery-store"
I wouldn't say there was any single item which was must have at TJs - but on aggregate it is without question "that much better" than anything we have in Canada.
Trader Joe's is different from other stores, not necessarily better or worse. When I lived in California, we did a lot of shopping at Trader Joe's, but you couldn't really get all of your groceries there. Conversely, you could not get equivalents to a lot of Trader Joe's products at other stores. Canada has grocery stores that are 100% equivalent to regular grocery stores in the U.S., but it has nothing that is really equivalent to Trader Joe's.
Traditionally groceries refers to foodstuffs only. Hence the creation of the word supermarket where groceries, household good and other things things were all sold under one roof. TJs carries a few personal care items like toothbrushes and soap but they're probably only about 2% of the shelf space in a store. They're in the food business, that's it.
What does it even mean "what America has to offer"? The Trader Joe stores are in America. True TJ is owned by a multi-national corporation, but almost all stores are owned by multi-national corporations. If what America has to offer only includes stores that are not owned by multi-national corporations then I'm not really sure what is left that TJ is being compared to.
I suspect that meant that many Americans will go out of their way to go to a Trader Joes, because their products are unique in some way. Ergo, the rest of "what America has to offer" isn't a good TJ replacement, either.
I think Trader Joe's is mostly about having different things, not necessarily better. At least the one near me has poor selections of most basic grocery items with weak produce and missing the less common basic items if you want to cook yourself (corn meal for example). Instead, it has a large selection of TJ-branded frozen and semi-prepared food items that aren't available elsewhere as well as snacks. I'm rather contemptuous of the whole idea as I'm in favor of more basic food items being the standard and think Trader Joes' take up precious grocery store space in urban areas, but I can see its appeal.
My son used to love their Hawaiian bagels, which we would stock up on when we lived in Maple Ridge and went down to the US for a day trip occasionally. Trader Joe's also has wine which is good for the price, but that doesn't work for Canadians because of import duties and quantity limits. The Trader Joe's in Bellingham is overrun by us Canadians, just like Point Roberts for package receiving...
With regards to specialty foods that aren't available in big chain grocery stores, Marilu's Market in Burlington, Ontario is a close comparison to Trader Joe's.
I feel that I've lived so long in the Bay Area now that I'm starting to take nice things for granted. While I wouldn't drive to another state for it, I'll drop by Trader Joe's today and be thankful =)
