You have arrived in a new city and you would like to cook the food you actually eat. That is not a nostalgic indulgence — it is cheaper, it is better, and it is the fastest way for a new place to start feeling like somewhere you live. Birmingham is unusually good at this. Around 26.7% of residents were born outside the UK, and the shops have followed: egusi, plantain, atta, gochujang, cassava, fresh curry leaves, freekeh, twaróg and the right kind of rice are all here, usually in bigger bags and at better prices than a supermarket will give you.
This guide is arranged by where the food comes from, so you can go straight to your own aisle.
African and Caribbean
Samis is the biggest name in the city for West African and Caribbean groceries, and it happens to be the closest to us: Samis Wholesale Cash and Carry, 82–89 Cecil Street, B19 3SU, a three-minute walk from Cliveland Street with no ring road and no bus in the way. It is an African and Caribbean superstore run as a cash and carry, so the packet sizes are generous and the prices behave accordingly.
Their own catalogue runs to more than a thousand lines. Dry and smoked fish. Frozen fish, meat and poultry. Fresh vegetables, plantain and yam. Spices and seasoning by the bag rather than the jar. Bakery, cereals, drinks, snacks, household bits, health and beauty. The brand names on the shelves are the ones people actually ask for: Nido, Cerelac, Bournvita, Peak, Dalgety, Bigga.
Being a cash and carry, it rewards buying properly. A 10kg bag of rice, a large tin of palm oil and a kilo of dried crayfish will cost less per portion than anything you can assemble in a supermarket, and they will last you most of a term.
Cash and carry pricing works on volume. If you live in a flat with other people who cook, do one shop together and split the big bags. Four people splitting a 10kg sack of rice each carry 2.5kg home, which is a very different walk.
Beyond Samis, the African and Caribbean food shops thicken up north-west of the centre through Newtown, Lozells and Handsworth. Lozells Road has New Medina Superstore at 109–111 (B19 2TR) and Sonalis Supermarket at number 9 (B19 2TN). Newtown Shopping Centre on High Street has Food City in Unit 14 (B19 2SB) and a Farmfoods in Unit 2a (B19 2SS) — Farmfoods is worth knowing for cheap frozen goat, fish and okra.
Further out on the Soho Road corridor, Tropical Foods is at 7 Stafford Road, B21 9DT, and International Supermarket at 140–142 Soho Road, B21 9LN. Soho Road is a proper high street: two miles of grocers, halal butchers, sweet centres, fabric shops and jewellers, with a Lidl at 397 (B21 9SF) if you want to pick up the boring half of the shop at the same time.
South Asian
Birmingham does not have one South Asian shopping street. It has several, and they are not interchangeable.
Ladypool Road, Sparkbrook (B12) is the Balti Triangle. Azad Supermarket at 132–136 (B12 8JA) and Murad Superstore at 349 (B12 8LA) are the anchors, with sweet centres and butchers in between. Kahmir Halal Catering Butchers is round the corner at 132–134 Stoney Lane, B12 8AQ.
Stratford Road, Sparkhill (B11) runs on from it and is where the larger grocers are: East and West Supermarket at 721–725 (B11 4DN), Azad's at 479–483 (B11 4LE), Goldens at 870 (B11 4BS), Amaan at 940 (B11 4BU). Fresh coriander, methi, karela and drumsticks are cheaper here than anywhere in the centre.
Alum Rock Road (B8) is the other big one, strong on Pakistani and Kashmiri staples. Al-Amin at 2a (B8 1JB) and Pakeeza at 111 (B8 1ND) are both cash-and-carry scale.
For genuinely bulk buying — 20kg atta, catering tins of ghee, sacks of onions — M. Sharif Cash and Carry at 33–48 Charles Henry Street, B12 0SD, and Caspian Cash and Carry at Unit 4 Port Hope Road, B11 1JS, are set up for it. They are warehouses, not shops. Take a friend and a car if you can borrow one.
Sri Lankan and Bangladeshi staples — pandan leaf, Maldive fish, jackfruit, mustard oil, panch phoron — are stocked across the Stratford Road and Alum Rock grocers rather than in a single dedicated shop, so ask at the counter rather than hunting the aisles.
East and South East Asian
Wing Yip is the one to know. The Birmingham store is at 375 Nechells Park Road, Nechells, B7 5NT — it is the company's head office as well as a shop. Their opening hours are 8.30am to 6pm Monday to Saturday and 10am to 4pm on Sunday, with the doors open from 9.45am on Sundays for browsing. The phone number is 0121 327 6618. It is a full oriental cash and carry: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Vietnamese and Malaysian ingredients, fresh Asian greens, frozen dumplings and seafood, sauces and noodles in sizes you will not see in a supermarket, plus woks, claypots, rice cookers and steamers. Bus 64 runs to Nechells.
Closer in, the Chinese Quarter around Hurst Street has Day In Chinese Supermarket in the Arcadian Centre, Unit B101, 70 Hurst Street, B5 4TD, and Day In Import Export at 1–2 Wrottesley Street, B5 4RT. Both are walkable from the centre and fine for a mid-week top-up of tofu, noodles, chilli oil and greens. There is also a Filipino stall, Oriental Pinoy Shop, in Unit 50 of the Bull Ring Indoor Market, B5 4RQ.
Middle Eastern, Turkish and North African
The Dudley Road corridor in Winson Green is the Middle Eastern and Kurdish strip: Kurdistan Supermarket at 400–404 Dudley Road, B18 4HD, and Venice International Supermarket at 247, B18 4EJ. Expect flatbread, bulgur, freekeh, olives, pickles, halloumi, pomegranate molasses, sumac and za'atar, and a butcher counter at the back. Turkish and North African cooking overlaps almost entirely with what these shops carry — if you want long peppers, ayran, proper Turkish coffee, harissa, preserved lemons or couscous, this is the street to try first.
Eastern European
UK Zabka at 296 Rookery Road, Handsworth, B21 9QG, is the nearest established Polish shop: rye bread, kabanosy, kefir, twaróg, pierogi, soured cucumbers. Lidl and Aldi also carry a decent Polish range, and Aldi Newtown is 16 minutes' walk from Cliveland Street.
Markets
Best value fresh produce in the city, and about 21 minutes' walk south. Note that the walk crosses the A38 ring road, which adds two or three minutes over what a map tells you. Days and hours below are from the council's markets page.
| Market | Days | Hours | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Market | Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri, Sat | 9am–5pm, Sat to 5.30pm | 130 stalls of fruit, vegetables, herbs, chillies, yam, plantain |
| Indoor Market | Mon–Sat | 9am–5.30pm | 140 stalls including the fish market, plus butchers and produce |
| Rag Market | Tue, Thu, Fri, Sat | 9am–5pm | Fabric, haberdashery, household, electricals |
The Indoor Market fish counters will gut, scale and fillet whole fish for you, and will sell you heads and bones for stock. Ask. The Open Market is where a bag of onions or a box of mangoes costs a fraction of supermarket prices, and traders drop prices further in the last hour.
The council's page still lists all three markets on the Edgbaston Street site with the hours above. The markets' long-term future has been under discussion alongside the Smithfield redevelopment for years — check that page before a long trip if you hear anything about a move.
Closer to home, St Paul's Market is ten minutes' walk and is street food rather than groceries, but it is a good reason to be out in the quarter on a weekend.
Getting there and back with heavy bags
| Where | From Cliveland Street | How |
|---|---|---|
| Samis, Cecil Street | 3 min | Walk |
| Bull Ring markets | ~21 min | Walk, or tram from St Chads |
| Lozells and Newtown | Short bus | 7, 33 or 51 from Newtown Row |
| Soho Road, Handsworth | Bus | 74, Birmingham to Handsworth and West Bromwich |
| Ladypool Road area | Bus | 35 towards Balsall Heath and Moseley |
| Stratford Road, Sparkhill | Bus | 6, Birmingham to Sparkbrook and Sparkhill |
| Alum Rock Road | Bus | 14, Birmingham to Saltley and Alum Rock |
| Wing Yip, Nechells | Bus | 64 to Nechells |
Route descriptions are from bustimes.org's National Express West Midlands listing. Check the app on the day — routes do change.
The way most people actually manage this: one big shop a month at a cash and carry, and small top-ups near home in between. Dry goods, oils, frozen meat and fish travel fine and keep. Herbs, greens and bread do not, so buy those little and often. A wheeled shopping trolley costs less than fifteen pounds and is the single most useful thing an international student can own in this city. Bus fares beat the cost of a taxi, but if you have bought 20kg of rice, a taxi home is the sensible call and still cheaper than a term of small expensive shops.
Cooking in a shared kitchen
Shared kitchens punish people who have not thought about storage. A few things that help.
Buy your spices whole and in bags, not in supermarket jars, then decant into your own sealed containers with your name on them. It is cheaper by an order of magnitude and it stops the great communal cumin ambiguity. A sturdy plastic crate or two, labelled, is worth more than any gadget — it means your dry goods live in one place and travel to the cupboard in one lift.
Buy once, properly: one heavy pan, one sharp knife, one sieve, one big airtight tub. Everything else can wait. If your dish depends on a specific pot — a karahi, a wok, a claypot, a pressure cooker — Wing Yip and the larger cash and carries sell them, and a pressure cooker will halve the time you spend competing for a hob.
Batch cooking is the honest answer to a busy kitchen. Cook a base once a week — a stew, a curry base, a pot of beans, a sofrito — freeze it in portions, and build quick meals off it on weeknights. It also means the big-bag economics of a cash and carry actually work for you rather than leaving 8kg of rice going stale.