We all know Mustafa as the place for cheap goods, but what’s less known or even unheard of is their mind-boggling selection of food (it’s really huge, and sells just about everything you can think of under the category of food: fresh fish, meat, frozen foods, and sundries). The OpenRice team raided the Mustafa supermarket to uncover the weirdest buys and bravely tried them out (because our editor told us to).

Sauces

1) Amazon’s Acai Berry Sauce, Mild ($2.90) Acai has been trending recently, so you would most probably have heard of it. This powerhouse of antioxidants has now been made into a pretty decent sauce, which tastes like sweet berries with an added spicy kick. Great as a salad dressing, or for BBQ, marinades and stir-fry. 2) Jack Daniel’s Honey Smokehouse Barbecue Sauce ($4) This is exactly like everything it's named after - smokey and barbcuey with a touch of sweetness (definitely a good combination). But sorry alcoholics, there's no whiskey in there. An excellent choice as a marinade for all grilling and baking occasions. 3) Byron Bay Chilli Co. – Fiery Coconut Chilli Sauce with Curry & Ginger, Medium Hot ($3.90) Woah, the fiery part is in the aftertaste, so wait a second before you think your chilli tolerance has improved. We feel the medium hot is just the right level of spiciness, and the coconut, chilli, curry and ginger go quite nicely together. A good cooking spice, marinade, spicy condiment or BBQ dipping sauce.

Drinks

4) Maiyas Cold Filter Coffee ($1.50) This has a cute and colorful packaging, but we were not taken in as we thought it looked a little dubious. It wasn’t as bad as we thought it would be – just very sweet and milky, and almost toffee-like in terms of flavour. Reminds us of Nescafe. 5) The Original Oatly! Oat Drink ($4.90) One sip and you’ll instantly feel healthier, but it’s kind of watery and tasteless – like what we imagine diluted liquid cardboard to be. Then again, it’s vegan, so it doesn’t contain any milk, soy, or “badness”(as the packaging puts it). Take your sides, guys. 6) Arizona Iced Tea – Raspberry Flavour/ Lemon Flavour ($1.90) Tastes vaguely like Pokka Lemon Tea, but wayyyy sweeter. The raspberry one turned out slightly better, and even its flavourings seemed quite natural (or maybe it was our low expectations). $1.90 for such a big can (650ml) isn’t too expensive though. 7) Coca Cola Life ($0.90) The printed label states that there’s vegetable extracts in the drink (hence its green hue), but we feel it just tastes like the slightly less sweet version of the normal Coke. When we gave the ingredients a check, we realized that no real vegetables were used, so the extracts are actually just chemicals. Hmm.

Snacks

8) Hunter – Pappadums Green Chilli Garlic ($2.50) We expected this to look like Pringles, but it was basically mini pappadums that greeted us when we opened the can. The green chili garlic flavour was a refreshing change from the typical chips, so we were rather excited to try them out. Our verdict? Worth a try! 9) Cheetos Puffs ($4.80) The Cheetos Puffs taste just like a normal cheesy snack – in fact, like an unfurled Cheezel. Pretty addictive, actually. 10) Pringles Honey Mustard ($2.60) This is really good – we loved it! Honey mustard tastes great on potato chips. If only it’s more widely available.

11) KuchenMeister – Kiwi Kuchen ($3.80) Again, this product was a bit too sweet for our liking, especially the kiwi thing in the middle. The cake itself was very crumbly, so it depends on your personal preference. It wasn’t that bad overall, but we’ll take Sara Lee or Silverbird over this anytime. 12) Tarall’oro Farfalle Al Nero Di Seppia ($3.20) The random Italian words on the package translate to “homemade pasta” as well as “butterflies with squid ink”, although we think it looks more like ribbons. It seems promising, but our diligence (and pantry facilities) failed us, so you’ll have to try it for yourself – especially if you like pretty pastas. 13) Elite Cupcake – Dream Banana ($2.20) When we opened the packaging the smell of banana (essence) hit us like a baseball bat welcoming a burglar. Taste wise, the essence was overpowering and the cupcake was exceedingly rich and buttery, which makes for a bad combination. Any banana-lover would be disappointed.

14) Voortman Rainbow Chip Cookies ($3.50) This one surprised us pleasantly! It wasn’t as sweet as the other snacks (despite its sugar loaded name) and the cookies were quite crumbly. Best not to have too many at one go though – it’s quite easy to get sick of them. 15) Splee - Milk Chocolate with Durian Flavour ($2.50) Being the durian snobs we are, we try to avoid buying cheap durian products – and this really proved us right. The scent of durian was so strong it wafted out from its unopened packaging, but not in a good way. We didn’t see any sign of durians under the ingredient list, so we supposed the pungency came from the “permitted flavour”, which probably explains the artificiality of the taste. Yikes. 16) Cadbury Biscuit Shorties ($2.70) We were actually looking forward to trying this, because hey, it’s a brand we know (at last)! This was like your typical shortcake cookies, but coated on one side with Cadbury chocolate. We think it tasted better than it should because the other snacks were uh, more for the adventurous. 17) Lindt Hello My Name Is Caramel Brownie ($4.90) As its name goes, this is milk chocolate with a caramel and brownie centre. Rather sweet (not that we expected anything else), but we enjoyed the strangely crunchy brownie bits in the filling. See also: Best dishes in Little India Popular cafes at Jalan Besar

Written by Mandy How & Eunice Tang