HOT: Mediterranean Wholesalers, 482 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

I think the best way to navigate Mediterranean Wholesalers is to bring your own Italian nonna. Really, they should offer a No-Nonsense Nonna rental service along with the shopping trolleys.

Since no such service exists, I was left to face the fomidable rows of dried pasta shapes on my own. The supermarket also sells pallets of other mediterranean goods, from caranoli rice to tomato passata, jerry cans of olive oil, frozen filled pasta, as well as offering fresh bread, wine, sweets and deli products such as chorizo and baccala. When you're done with your shopping, you can even settle down at the authentic-looking Italian bar for an espresso and a slice of super-cheap apple cake or marble cake.

My shopping basket:

• frozen beef tortellini ($5.50)
• Carmelina sundried tomatoes ($4.55)
• Mazzetti pesto because I don't have enough basil to make my own now ($4.65)
• La Risera Arborio rice - just picked a brand randomly ($2.99)
• Reggia pasta - again no idea, but I spotted a little old lady stocking up on the sale items, so figured it must be ok ($0.99-$1.19)
• Di Martino bucatini - mainly just so I'd have a point of comparison for the Reggia pasta ($1.19)
• Di Martino Calamarata - cos it came in a nifty box and was an unusual ring shape ($2.29)
• Montefiore mozzarella and prosciutto for my pizza ($3.99)
• Giant hunk of grana padano - 600g was the smallest I could find! ($11.91)
• Arroz de Calasparra - the best rice for paella as told to me by a snobby Spaniard ($7.95). It's double the price at Simon Johnson!
  

If anyone can enlighten me as to what brands I should have been buying or whether I made the right choices, please let me know!

HOT: A1 Bakery, 645 Sydney Rd, Brunswick

I remember my first visit to A1 Bakery and being astounded by the cheap prices for the freshly baked lebanese pizzas. Well, amost 5 years on and it's still dirt cheap, mostly hovering around the $3 mark.

My zaatar pizza ($1.50!) consisted of a soft pillowy base, the complete opposite of a crispy Italian crust, topped with a tangy zaatar. There's lots of other (basic) toppings to choose from, and the warm bready base was so good that I could have kept eating and eating. However, I wanted to save room for one of the delicious baklava - a morsel of intense sweetness with firm filo pastry and a hint of orange-blossom water ($1).

On a Monday afternoon the spartan dining area was a microcosm of harmonious multicultural Australia: pimple-faced youths; middle-aged Lebanese men arguing animatedly; stout po-faced matrons dressed in black hajibs; and Anglo families with kids mesmerised by the lurid Lebanese music video on the flat screen TV. It made me feel warm and fuzzy inside!