I’m happy to have Tio Wally (long-time Me So Hungry reader) aboard to send in his eating adventures from across America. Here he is in Kennewick, Washington.
Greetings from Kennewick, Washington
N 46.227125 W 119.235268 Elev. 480 ft.
If you’ve never been to Costco before it can be an interesting place. It’s a membership warehouse store where “50 million people†pay a $55 (or $110) yearly fee for the privilege of buying more stuff than many of them will ever need and/or use.
Everything there is big: big packages, big bundles. If you want, say, a cantaloupe, you can’t buy just one. You have to buy a net-bag of three melons. And so it goes for virtually everything throughout the store.
Don’t get me wrong. It’s very high-quality stuff at fairly reasonable prices. You just have to want a lot, a whole lot. This can work out favorably, though. I bought an entire case (24 bottles) of the best beer in the world — Alaskan Amber Ale — for less than $24. The cheapest I’d seen it previously was about $30.
Costco also has a snack bar that’s truly a great deal. It offers only a half-dozen or so items but all of them are reasonably good, especially the Polish Dogs. And if the snack bar is located outside the building you don’t need a membership card to get one!
The deal is a 1/4 Pound PLUS All Beef Hot Dog or Polish Sausage with a 20 oz. Soda (one refill) for $1.50. As long as I can remember Costco sold Hebrew National meat tubes at the snack bar, which were really great. No surprise there. After all, Hebrew “We Answer to a Higher Authority†National is kosher, so they know weenies. Now, however, all Costco sells are Kirkland (Costco’s store brand) sausages. I don’t think they’re quite as good as the Hebrew National’s but it’s still a tasty deal.
Along with the dogs they have some decent fixin’s, like deli mustard, fresh-bagged, mechanically chopped onions from a hand-cranked, screw-driven metal dispenser, and little cups of sauerkraut (on request). All in all it’s a very good and very filling deal.
The bad part, though, is that in older stores and stores located in Northern climes the snack bar is located inside the building. That means you have to have a membership card to get in; they actually have people posted at the door checking membership cards like they’re visas or passports or something.
Of course, there are ways around that, too. But what a pain in the ass for a freakin’ ‘furter, Frank.
And so we roll.
Costco, locations throughout North America.
Tio Wally pilots the 75-foot, 40-ton(max) land yacht SS Me So Hungry. He reports on road food from around the country whenever parking and InterTube connections permit.
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