I don't currently have any ethnic grocery stores near me, but when I did, the Mexican ones always had chicken thighs for cheap, and also limes.
Like, the regular grocery store might have limes at $0.50 each (in the midwest), while the ethnic store would have 10/$1.00. (pre-covid, pre-inflation prices.)
And there was this Ukrainian place where, from the deli, they would sell in trays a mix of the butt ends of the deli meats and cheeses. They'd label it by weight some bulk price that was often cheaper than some of the meats or cheeses contained in it.
It was like being able to get a cheap meat/cheese sampler tray. So there'd be chunks of salami, turkey, olive loaf--or swiss, american, munster...just whatever meats or cheeses they got to the ends of recently.
At an Asian place I used to go to, I could get tilapia, basa, or swai in frozen fillets for cheap. I actually liked the basa and swai--they're basically farmed asian catfish, but can't be labeled catfish as a way to protect the north american catfish industry. I can see why they wanted to prevent competition--I find that basa and swai don't have the "muck" taste that local catfish have.
Anyway, what are some good deals you have been able to find at local ethnic grocery stores?
Thank you so much for your reply! It was basically everything I was hoping for. I really do appreciate it. I didn't know chili powder could vary that much, or that tumeric can overpower easily. (I've tried playing with tumeric...and just didn't get good results as I had no knowledge to draw from.)
And I'll definitely take a look at that video, so I can see an example of bad usage. (Man--is there a YouTube channel like that? Or blog? "Bad examples of cooking--and why!" Like, not click-bait bad, just...this isn't right, for these specific, grounded reasons...)