Bestco Food Mart

Produce here is cheaper than T&T. Beware of the parking lot, though! It’s usually super packed on the weekend so it’s hard to find a decent spot!

This review is on their ready-​to-​eat dim sum.
1) Most of it is barely heated.
2) It’s not cheap (Most items are about $ 2.60, which is a price I can get at actual dim sum restaurants)
3) They don’t use the best quality ingredients (you can definitely taste the difference). Example: Their soy milk ($ 0.99/cup) isn’t smooth. You can definitely feel the ground bean texture. Another example: their steamed spareribs are extremely tough, and not in a dry way. They’re unpleasantly chewy.
4) They don’t put much effort into their food (not a dim sum item, but their Vietnamese cold rolls are very loosely wrapped, so they fall apart when they’re eaten).
5) Their eating area is grungy. The tables are dirty, the seats are dirty, and the floor is dirty.
6) My mom asked for a cup of hot water. They told her they only give hot water to people who bring their own cups (is buying one for like $ 0.25 not an option here?)
To garner the above, we had: steamed spareribs with rice noodle roll (rice noodle roll was in huge pieces and not bite-​sized, and it was way over-​cooked), fish paste stuffed eggplant and tofu, minced pork wrapped in bean sheet, salty pan fried dumpling (ham sui gok), vietnamese cold rolls.
The only one that would be 3 stars (as in very average), was their steamed chicken feet in black bean sauce (or phoenix talon, if you will).
I don’t think I’m ever going to come here for dim sum again. =(

This review is ONLY for BestCo’s Beef Broccoli at their food counter!
$ 7.99 buys you a container stuffed with flavourful, tender, marinated flank steak and Chinese broccoli. Yummy. Burp.
A great combination of taste and value!

They don’t take American Express. Chicken wings are bought not with the meat guys but pre-​packaged at the fridge side priced by weight. They also have bulk buy mini chicken eggs $ 2.99 for 30. They have Missha inside too and they take Debbie membership card. They have clearance items in the back and $ 1 face masks. Night times they do special combo deals at the hot bar such as two sides and a rice for $ 5 ish.

I quite like this Chinese supermarket. Every time my Mom stops by, she always buys me the «砵仔糕» (red bean pudding), they usually have matcha flavour, yin yang flavour which is basically one made with white sugar and the other made with brown sugar and sesame flavour. The sesame flavoured one doesn’t have any red beans in it though. I know they are made fresh everyday because the quality is good and the price is discounted in the evening to encourage customers to buy it. There is a best before date on it as well. The food sold at the foodcourt in the supermarket for takeout is decent, which is hard to find these days. a lot of the foodcourt takeout at other Chinese supermarkets are mediocre, but I would consider the kitchen here a gem.

If you love Asian supermarkets, you will die for this place. :) Fair prices, excellent selection of specialty items, fresh variety of seafood and produce, dim sum counter, Peking duck, bakery, sushi rice bags, pan-​Asian snacks, lovely seating area, money trees… it’s heaven.

Super clean, super spacious, super bright, and with tons of available cashiers! OK, so maybe we visited this place in the middle of a cold snap in January, but whatever. It‘s awesome to see such a comfortable place to do shopping for Asian groceries.
The selection of items are quite impressive, rivalling that of T&T, but with slightly cheaper prices. I wouldn’t say the average price here is extremely low, but I’d take shopping here any day compared to Tone Tai or *shudder* SunFood, even if you do pay a bit more than them. Still much cheaper on average than T&T, and we all know that THAT’s the barometer for Asian groceries these days.
We found a rather extensive selection of Filipino goods along with the Chinese ones, most likely a product of the market it serves, which is nice. The cooked food section at the side of the store is also a nice plus, and impressively big too!
Again, this review is biased because the store was super dead on this Wednesday evening, but GODDAMMIT it was one of the most pleasant shopping experiences I’ve had in a long time. Almost makes me willing to overlook the fact that I paid $ 6 for those Singaporean jerkies that are now locally made in Toronto.
What? I did say it was generally cheaper than T&T. I didn’t say it was a cheap place per se. Stop judging me.

this place is like t and t. it’s around the brimley and huntingwood area in scarberia. parking is a pain on the weekends. weekdays is better. whatever the day, come early. they open at 8 in the morning. there is a dollarama and a new dumpling place next door down. i highly recommend their bbq pork and the roast chicken at their food section. the chicken is now only sold on the weekends or so i am told. they also sell freshly made sushi and dim sum. be aware that most of the staff do not understand or speak english. the cashiers speak a bit of english i guess. vegetables are fresh and plenty. fruits too.

I enjoy coming here to purchase fresh groceries because there’s a fish market inside and plenty of items to choose from. Sometimes I find the prices here are fair and bit more cheaper than that of let’s say Foody Mart in Bamburgh — but overall it’s always packed so you know that it is a popular area for people to shop.
I also love how there is a Dollarama next door for all your other cheap yet useful needs.

One of the better Asian grocery stores in the GTA. It’s HUGE — during peak hours when the parking lot gets a bit hectic and the checkout lines are HUGE — it never ever really seems all that busy in and around the store because it’s so spacious in there.
The produce is really good here. Nice veggies, and fruit — they offer a wide variety and often have the best price points. hey have a good selection of discounted produce– and you can actually save quite a bit of money if you plan and use it right away. Helps limit food waste and saves you money!
They have a solid seafood department — lots of fish mongers providing the messy cleaning and prep work for your seafood pickings. Meat department — they have a prepackaged meats section — mostly poultry. They also have a butcher counter for your other meat needs as well. It’s well staffed — you just have to be assertive.- they don’t always see who was there first.
There are aisles and aisles of noodles, snacks, teas, sauces, canned goods, frozen foods– a good assortment of Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Filipino food items, condiments and spices. If they can further expand their selection of their international food items — that would make it an even better grocery store.
Bakery — mostly Chinese styled baked goods. steamed man taos (steamed buns) they come in many different flavours and sizes, white /​whole wheat bread (asian style — flatter — very thin crust. They also do the brioche styled buns w/​different toppings and fillings. End of day sales where they package up the leftover buns and basically create «loots bags» of random buns at very discounted prices. In house baked cookies, cakes, croissants, tarts are also available as well. You can order birthday cake here.
Hot Table /​Chinese BBQ counter:
Hot table includes a dim sum section — They have steamed items and rice porridge and you work your way down to the fried items. Word of advice on the dim sum. Go early in the morning — that’s the freshest — as the day progesses less people get the dim sum and the turnover is not as frequent. Do yourself a favour — skip end of day dim sum.
The rest of the hot table has a great selection — they have combos of 2– 3 items for about $ 6 which also includes rice and a soup. These portions are huge. The ladies behind the counter are patient and VERY generous! I love the gai lan w/​beef. The greens are never over cooked, and your get a decent amount of meat and veggies. They have other items as well — spicy eggplant w/​pork, lemon chicken, sweet and sour pork, crispy fish, brasied tofu, pork belly with persevered greens, green beans w/​minced meat and a lot of other items. They also have noodles and deep fried items like shrimp, squid and spring rolls. They generally have a couple of specials each day.
Chinese barbeque is standard — nothing special. yet again — discounts at the end of the day.
They also have a small sushi section — they do end of day sales — prices are already pretty cheap — so it’s good deal. Quality is ok for supermarket sushi, better than T and T., not as good as Galleria. Selection is limited: mostly cucumber, basic salmon or tuna maki and variations of california rolls.
They have a small seating area if you want to eat your hot table food right away. They have a cash out for dine-​in food. at the entrance of the eat in area. It’s pretty secluded part of the store — never had trouble finding a seat when I was dining in. They also have a bubble tea stand there as well.
Recently added a cosmetic area by the front near the bubble tea stand.
Washrooms located in the back close to the butcher /​fish area. Surprisingly well kept!
This is one of the best Asian supermarkets in the GTA — staff are generally helpful and polite — and it’s big and well stocked.
They often have samples — they often sample mushrooms in the produce department, they also do dumplings, fishballs, noodles, beverages and moon cake during harvest moon fest.
BESTCO is pretty much the best.

Beware, the male employees here tend to be on their menstrual cycles. One told me off for taking a pic of durians and another pulled a cart of discounted fruit away from me when I was trying to get to the oranges at the bottom. Disgusting attitude. Other than that selection is pretty good.

One variable out of many…
Went on Jan 30, 2014 around 7pm. Went to get one dish of hot food. Lined up in the express lane (1 – 10 items near the exit). Woman in a red tuque in front had around 30 items, arrogantly placed each item on the conveyor. People that were lining up told her in canto, mando, english that it’s the express lane with a max of 10 items. She ignored everyone.
Cashier proceeded to checkout the woman’s item when it’s blatantly obvious that the woman exceeded the 10 limit. Even as an after-​thought during paying, cashier didnt even bother commenting to the woman about the item limit.

Yet another T&T clone. Lots of food. Fresh Fish & Meat area is very clean but the aisles themselves were quite difficult to navigate only because all the packaged food were all over the place like the chip aisle was like 4 aisles down from the cookies, etc. Anyways moving onto the food court. Lots of selection of dim sum (which is mediocre), typical Chinese food items and BBQ meats and sushi. Overall, pretty good. Parking space is good but bike space not so good as there is only one bike rack which is always full thanks to the employees (maybe?) parking their bikes so I have to go park it elsewhere and honestly not too happy to come out and find it accidentally locked in with another person’s bike lock (GRR!) So they lost one star because of that. NEEDS MORE BIKE RACKS!

When I was giving the ratings for this place, I was a little torn. I like this place because I always go to the dim sum place next plaza. So its convenient to buy groceries and whatnot. Its new, prices are okay, fairly clean, what’s not to like?
Well let me begin, don’t ever buy the meats on sale. The meats that are on sale are never properly trimmed. So when you go home you are left with a lot of useless stuff that you have to spend a long time trimming. After you trim away the useless stuff you are left with a small piece of meat and it costs about the same as it would regular price. This happened to my family and a few friends who bought meats on sale.
Now onto produce. Never buy the Chinese Vegetables in a large bag. I bought a few bags of baby bak choi and the ones outside where you can see through the bag looks really fresh and clean. But once I go home and remove them from the bag, the ones hidden in the middle were all yellow. Not just old or wrinkly, but yellow to the point where its probably been in the store for weeks. So then I am left with a little bit more than quarter of a bag. This has happened twice in two months, that only proves to me that this is regular practice.
I do love the fact that this place has a lot of cashiers. I have never had to wait for more than 5 minutes to pay. But I hate how one or two of them are extremely rude. She wouldn’t bag your groceries for you and starts scanning the next customers’ groceries. Then she will stare at you and give you the look as if you are an inconvenience.
Overall this place has similar prices as the larger supermarkets in this area. But their quality isn’t as high as T&T. They also lack the choices T&T has to offer. I have tried their foods in the food court and I like how they aren’t overly salty or loaded with lots of msg. But choices are limited. Parking spaces in this plaza isn’t so bad, as with all other supermarkets go at an odd hour if you want more spaces. If you go at rush hour, then be prepared to fight for a spot — like you would with any other supermarkets.

I like Bestco. For me, it is a large No Frills with a Chinese specialization.
Reasonably clean and decent pricing. It’s a large supermarket with good amount of selection. For the most part, their flyer specials run on for the entire (flyer period) week, as opposed to just the weekend.
I do nearly most of my grocery shopping here at Bestco (it’s nearby and convenient for me). It has the Chinese greens that I like, and a decent-​enough-​quality of salad greens for my («Western”/“White») salads. You can get two decent quality romaine lettuce heads for about $ 1.00-$ 1.50. I think I purchased a beautiful, large head of red-​leaf lettuce (labelled as green-​leaf) for around $ 0.70. Then, there are your regular carrots, tomatoes, celery, etc.
I only mention the lettuce because, oftentimes, the lettuce is wilted at Chinese groceries. Not to say that this place is the exception. But, it is an exception most of the time. (There have been a few instances where I have seen wilted edges on the green leaf lettuce. The romaine is generally a winner.)
Their meat counters often have specials. The only problem (aside from the language barrier for me) is that the meat specials often sell out by the time I come grocery shopping in the evening.
I like that they have a small section for discounted produce that is going bad/​not-​up-​to-​par. I see workers re-​organizing and sorting the produce into containers. You can see the workers clean the meat and seafood counters at night, closer to closing. It’s nice to see that there is some sort of standardization going on.
The store is still fairly new and it is still shifting around it’s organization of their shelf items. I hope they fix that soon, because it’s somewhat chaotic for me and it’s difficult for me to find the items I want.
It has a small food court, but I have never tried their food court items. They offer baked goods, breads, cakes, stir-​frys, bbq meat, sushi, and probably another array of items I missed.
Since summer is right around the corner, they are currently selling small containers of flowers and vegetables. I found kale! The only place I have seen it in Toronto so far. Small containers of four seedlings are $ 1.29/each. I believe they also offer Chinese vegetables as well, but I cannot read the Chinese labels.
In terms of parking, it is a breeze on weekdays. And a nightmare on weekends. All the roads leading to the entrances/​exits of the Chartwell Plaza/​Bestco are cracked and filled with huge potholes.
Open until 11pm everyday/​7 days a week. Cash/​credit/​debit. Shopping carts take loonies.

I like this supermarket, it’s neat and clean (just way out of my way to come here) I decided to come here one day because people were telling me the food court food was really good and they don’t really cook dinner anymore.
Before I began grocery shopping, I tried the food.
food court chinese food — it was great price and the food tasted really good.
sushi — it’s not great, just a bit better than the ones from T&T
Vietnamese dessert — I think they should just skip it, it was nasty.
groceries — they have a lot of selection, the prices are fair, I’m not sure how to tell if they are fresh, I just buy it if I needed it.
I heard some horror stories about parking here, I came on a weekday night and parking was easy and plenty of space.

Oddly enough, I actually enjoy grocery shopping here. It’s big and clean. I guess the dirty grocery stores of yore are making way for this new model of uncluttered, well-​stocked spaciousness. The prices for Asian groceries here are a bit less in general compared to the mainstream stores. I’ve found the ratio of cashiers to customers much higher than other groceries stores and I haven’t had to wait more than 3 customers at most. There is free parking aplenty.

Was just here roughly 3 hours ago.
And OMG, PARKING!
It was jam packed here! Not only in the parking lot, but also in the grocery store!
If you’re familiar with T&T, BestCo will be nothing different! Though I do very much prefer T&T over Best Co. The prices are very much cheaper than T&T, but the choices of food (regular chinese fast food, disappointing dim sum, bbq & bubble tea) were just too minimal when you have T&T out there sporting out mini food stalls.
The place was very brightly lit, quite decorative and beautiful with all the grand opening stuff, and was nice and spacey, despite the amount of people that were here! I probably won’t be coming back here, as there’s just so much more better grocery stores out there.
I did appreciate their vast selection of Filipino stuff, that I really haven’t seen anywhere else (non-​filipino places), even T&T! It was all in the same isle with Japanese, Korean, Viet and Taiwanese food, which was another plus for me! As I mainly do Japanese, Korean and Filipino cooking at home!
But it isn’t bad! I hope they do well!

2.5÷5
If Foody Mart wasn’t a thing, this parking lot just might have won the award for the most dysfunctional parking job ever.
Entering the parking lot was already a challenge. I decided to enter via Huntingwood instead of Brimley, looking at the huge lineup… except when I went to the parking lot area none of the parking guards allowed me to proceed for at least 10 minutes… like really? There were at least 5 times where there was a respectable gap between cars, and the parking guard stood in front of me, not letting me go.
The parking lot itself was a challenge, but having experienced Foody’s parking lot this one isn’t even half as bad. I managed to find a space in about 90 seconds.
This supermarket has a shortage of shopping carts. I went through every single shopping cart area, including the inside, and there were absolutely zero shopping carts. I did manage to find the small rolling carts inside after one person abandoned theirs.
Food selection is standard for a Chinese supermarket, better than Foody (with better produce quality as well), and about the same level as T&T, with overall lower prices. The Pacific Gold Rice for $ 9.88 were sold out by noon today, even though it was a limit of 1 per family (though I saw a group of people taking 2 of them while lining up at the cashier). Hot food/​sushi area was disappointing, ended up not buying anything.
Lines were ridiculously long. I thought Foody was bad, but I had a 40 minute lineup at around 12:30pm, even with all 14 counters open.
The English translations were horrible in the store. At the food court section there’s a sign that says «Please Kindly To Wait Here» staring right in front of you. I saw a lot of Caucasians just staring at that sign laughing. I know it’s a minor issue, but you’d think in an area where it’s mixed Asian and Caucasians they would hire better translators.
I would probably not come back unless there is a major discount in products I normally buy.

Grand Opening Day at Bestco Food Mart was a nightmare… At least one for me as the whole neighbourhood decided to all come out to shop on this day?!
If you have been to other flagship Supermarket: T&T, Ocean or Al Premium, I would tell you just come back when the hype die down. It doesn’t worth fighting for a parking space in a smallish lot and then lining up with the Seniors that decided to stock up on bags of rice at $ 9.88 each, or Vita 6 pack drinks for $ 1.88.
For people in the area, this is the biggest Asian grocery stores aside from T&T and the prices here are definitely cheaper. The selections though is quite standard.
Hot Table area is kind of disappointed with the usual BBQ, Sushi, Chinese stir fried and dim sum. T&T definitely is way ahead of the game.
Maybe it is grand opening day, a lot of the pastry and baked goods lack signges. I just could not figure out what some of the cookies are…
I would definitely be back to pick up some odds and ends. But won’t make a special trip to shop here.
They do accept Visa, MC and Debit.
Opens Daily from 8 am — 11 pm