I pay about $60 a year to belong to the “wholesale store” Costco, though I’m sure I don’t recoup any money on the membership fee, as most of the products are designed for large families: 24-pack rolls of toilet paper, huge containers of ice cream, and so on. But I keep my membership because there are certain items that are either really good or loss leaders, and occasionally I get a hankering for some.
That happened this morning after I’d talked to a friend who was singing the paeans of Costco’s “Chocolate Tuxedo Mousse Cake,” which she buys all the time for special occasions. It ain’t cheap for Costco ($16.99 for a 43-ounce cake), but it’s made with great care, tastes fantastic (or so I’ve heard), and is a BIG cake (You can read some sterling reviews here and here.) The product details are all ye need to know:
- Tuxedo Chocolate Mousse Cake
- Chocolate cake
- White chocolate mousse
- Chocolate mousse
- Brownie chunks
- Chocolate ganache
- Topped with chocolate decorations
So I treated myself. Here’s a photo before I cut myself a (small) slice:
My small slice, which was filling even though I can eat a LOT of dessert. It was fantastic, with all the differently flavored layers and textures melding perfectly. This is an ideal cake to buy for someone’s birthday, because it would take an expert baker hours to make it, and, as you can see above, it’s gorgeous. But of course you have to be a member of Costco.
A laudatory video about the cake:
And, of course, you can’t visit Costco without taking advantage of their special hot dog/drink deal: for only $1.50, you get a footlong Hebrew National hot dog (i.e., all beef and good) with a condiment bar, plus a large cup of soda that you can refill as often as you want. They lose money on this, but it’s one of their famous loss leaders. It is in fact so famous that “Costco hot dog” has its own Wikipedia page, which describes the deal as having a “cult following”. A photo from Wikipedia:
And another great loss leader, and one I bought today: a famous semi-organic Costco pre-roasted chicken, which is huge and costs only $4.99, a price that’s been stable for years. I can get at least four meals out of this puppy. HOWEVER, there have been reports that some chickens have a chemical flavor due to additives, and some other reports of illness. I haven’t noticed that, but I’ll be watching this one closely.
I’m sure we have some Costco mavens in the audience, so please add a comment about what you like or don’t like. There are entire websites devoted to what to buy and what to avoid there, but I haven’t perused them.
Chicken tonight, along with spinach, rice, and a half bottle of fine Australian viognier from Yalumba.
I can’t give details but all the gang would head in to Costco on occasion and get the fresh pizza for lunch – holy moley (..molé? … ‘mole?..), the crust is emblazoned in my mind – it is hard to stop eating that pizza, with all the best toppings! Then we’d meander around the place, high on pizza.
Oh, man does Costco know what it’s doing.
Fresh is the key ingredient in that pizza.
Yes, their pizzas are famous. You can buy a whole one for $10
I think they’re uncooked/raw, or maybe at most par-cooked .. uh-oh, I’m getting ideas….
Do they have pizza/baking stones for sale?
They don’t have pizza stones, but they have a lot of different “pizza ovens”.
https://www.costco.com/CatalogSearch?dept=All&keyword=pizza+oven
Holy…
I’ve looked at those things … really?! was my thought…
So I tried using a broiler. Works pretty good.
You should try their fabulous pumpkin pie ($5.99 and available only in the fall).
I think that our host does recommend the pumpkin pie and even has pictured it here on the site one year.
I have bought many of them. They’re made with good ingredients and are HUGE and also cheap. I like them with whipped cream. It’s a great pity that they’re available only in the fall and winter.
Yep. The rotisserie chicken yields a number of meal main courses for two. Also enjoy their Cabot, very old and sharp cheddar in a huge block (a chunk goes well as the cheese with turkey and Kosciusko mustard sandwich or an accompaniment to a scotch or two before Saturday night dinner) and huge apple pie. Oh and we just started to get their scalloped potatoes to go with the chicken for a dinner in a minute evening. You would think being retired and empty nesters, we would enjoy cooking all of our meals from scratch, but no…..
The Montreal smoked meat, in little micro-waveable pouches, is great. They’re in those big fridges with the bacon,
at least in Canada. I freeze them, and one pouch makes enough for two (on rye bread). We also have wonderful salmon wrapped around chopped shrimp in trays of 4, I believe. One portion enough for 2. I put these individually in baggies when I get home, and then freeze them. Cook them in toaster oven for 20 min. Deelish!
Grocery stores here all seem to do the roast chicken loss leader thing. A lot of the desserts and stuffs I cannot eat due to certain sugars they use that cause me issues with my stomach. I also hate crowds so I haven’t been to Costco is ages. In the olden days before Amazon sold everything, they were great for the occasional deals on computers and hard drives. I bought many an external hard drive in the late 90s/early 00s there.
Wild Atlantic Smoked Salmon sliced
Cabot cheddar
Castellano Olives (they don’t always have them-sad)
Backlava (they don’t always have them-very sad)
Toblerone (seemingly only around the holidays like the backlava)
Olives (large and good, they usually always have)
Olive salad
Panniers (the cookies that look like elephant ears)
Kirkland French Roast Coffee
Olive Oil
and yes the rotissery chicken, always that.
That’s a lot of cake. Enjoy!
Dittos to many things already mentioned. We easily recoup the membership fee in savings on gasoline. It’s been as low as $2.15 recently.
My wife and I recently bought a Tesla to use as the main car, so we hardly ever buy Costco gas anymore. (We keep a reasonably serviceable 2005 Honda gas car as a back-up.) And since we go to the store less frequently, we’re looking more closely at the membership fee.
I’m hoping Costco will set up charging stations for electric vehicles, though a local neighborhood Tesla charging station can take care of our needs beyond the slow — but relatively cheap — charging we get from our 120-volt house current. (We also have two sets of solar panels.)
I usually get their deboned rotisserie chicken- breast meat only. It’s very versatile; I use it for tacos, chicken salad, soups, stir-frys, but the version you got is great too- the skin! Plus I like dark meat better than breast meat.
I also like their chicken or pork tamales in the refrigerator section.
Sometimes they carry Bubbies dill pickles (also in the refrigerator section)- the BEST, buy them if you see them. WAY cheaper than the grocery store.
I like their organic Tortilla chips, a very good buy, but probably too much for one person to eat before they go stale…maybe put them in the freezer?
I’d also recommend the 2-pack of Dave’s Killer Bread (green bag, 21 grains, organic) also a lot cheaper than the grocer. I keep them in the freezer and toast to order.
Here in the Northwest (where Costco originated – Seattle in ’83) you can get great deals on fresh salmon, halibut, King crab, and my favorite- picked Dungeness. I don’t know if these fish items are readily available at other Costcos, but they’re always delicious and cheap(er).
I’ve never tried that cake, but it looks heavenly. I’d love a slice!
The raw tuna Poke, yum yum (mainly on weekends), and maybe only here in CA
We buy most of our food and household supplies at Costco even though there are only two of us – freezing food portions as others have mentioned, and storing supplies in closets.
I buy all my Apple products at Costco. The price is the same as at the Apple store, but you get two years of Apple Care coverage instead of one (and if you have the Costco Visa you get that discount). I dropped and broke my iPad about a year and a half after buying it, and was able to get a brand new one with the Apple Care coverage.
I also buy my hearing aids at Costco – excellent audiologists, high quality aids. Also eye glasses.
I think of my annual Costco membership as an entertainment purchase, I love going there and discovering new fun offerings, it is the one place crowds are not an annoyance.
I don’t think Costco hires AUDs just hearing aid dispensers who are people with very little training (depending on the state).
“I buy all my Apple products at Costco.” Can you have an Apple computer configured to certain specifications? Or can you buy only what is offered? I suspect the latter, but I will now check.
Yes eyeglasses too as you said! Good optometrists, very good deals on frames & lenses.
Sometimes they have Off the Eaten Path veggie crisps which are phenomenal.
Also great – the Blue Hill Bay smoked whitefish spread from (from Acme Smoked Fish, which sounds like something that Wile E Coyote is involved with).
We may be the only people in the U.S. who are not Costco members. We did try it out once. When we got to the store there was a long line waiting to get in and there were whole families with giant, pickup-sized grocery carts making a menace and threatening (by their bull-in-the-China-closet actions) to run the smaller and weaker over. We decided that we didn’t need to buy toilet paper 144 rolls at a time and went home. I know we miss out but we still have lots of options. Fred Mayer is a standout, as they have lots of everything, and Metropolitan Markets are fun to go to for high-end exotica. For everyday stuff, Safeway is good enough and offers gasoline rebates that are quite good.
I have been a Costco member at 4 times over the last 30 years.
I love the prices and the products; but I’ve always hated the shopping experience. When I was single, I let it lapse. I mainly went for the excellent selection and prices on their wines (from Europe) in the Costco stores in the Seattle area, where I used to live. I met the Costco wine buyer once (volunteering at a winery work party, he was a friend of a friend): He bought more wine than any other person on earth.
I still buy the Kirkland brand Prosecco, which is excellent and crazy cheap.
The Kirkland brand Norwegian smoked salmon is my personal crack.
I love the food from Costco. They really do amazingly well. The meat is excellent and cheap. Really, I only brave the (bad) Costco shopping experience for the food.
We now shop the Portland, Oregon Costco and we time our visits to avoid the crowds. One must do this if one wishes to avoid long lines.
I like the rotisserie chicken, love their cheese pizza and vanilla ice cream (but the calorie count is huge for both). Locally (central California coast) their brown pasture-raised eggs are great but this varies by location. I love their cheese danish (half of one at a time, heated, with added fruit jam – they freeze very well), excellent fancy cashews, love their filleted farmed steelhead (slather with mayonnaise and broil, just a few minutes a side, scrape off the mayo – just keeps it moist while broiling – delicious hot, or cold the next day, better than either salmon or trout), excellent organic butter and hot smoked honey roasted salmon (different from, but as good as lox). Also like Kewpie Deep Roasted Sesame Marinade. Hate it as salad dressing but love it as a marinade for grilled chicken or shrimp. Wish I could have more of their bakery products, but like most producers, they often use palm oil, which I can’t digest. Of course Costco is also cheaper for meat, heavy cream, milk, olive oil, coffee, zip-lock bags (essential for re-packaging everything into usable portions), vitamins, printer ink, dish washer soap, sweat pants, gasoline, batteries, etc. That may vary by where you live. A few years ago I was shocked by how much cheaper groceries were in New Hampshire as compared to California. So yeah, I guess I like Costco. They vet their products well and their return, ‘no questions asked, no receipt needed’, policy is fabulous for the occasional time a product isn’t up to snuff. Our joke has been, ‘If Costco doesn’t have it, you don’t need it’, not quite true, but close.
No, Jerry, I don’t come to WEIT for Costco reviews; I come for the news, pictures, jokes, cats, ducks, biology (more of that please), but you brought up Costco, so…
Not a food story, but…My father-in-law had a Costco membership and LOVED it. Several years back I was looking into buying my e-bike. I found the bike I really wanted but it was pricey, so I had to lower my sights a bit. My father-in-law mentioned one day that he had seen a bike at Costco and sent me a link. Sure enough, it was the bike I was pining for but for $1000 less than the manufacturer was selling it for! I can only surmise that it was also a loss leader, although I don’t think most people who shop there are looking for e-bikes. I’ve put about 3000 miles on that bike. ;^)
🚴🏼♂️ 🙂
Costco have a number of outlets in the UK, but AFAIAA they are not yet making major inroads into the trad superstore parts of the market. These are still dominated by Tesco, Sainsbury, Waitrose, Morrison, Asda, the Co-op, etc, plus some strong regional competitors such as Booth’s. The most fun is the German company Lidl, whose stores have a feature called ‘Lidl in the middle’, which includes whatever they have managed to secure at knock-down wholesale prices. You never know quite what might be on offer: baby highchairs, welding equipment, or skin-diving kit all seem to sell quite well. Even our local Lidl, quite a small one, usually has a good selection.
Costco also sells coffins and caskets. The comedian Joel McHale has a routine about his father being such a penny-pincher that he told his kids “When I die, I want you to buy a coffin from Costco. Put me in it, take it to the cemetery, then open the coffin, dump me in the grave, and take the coffin back to Costco!”
Yum, that cake is a must try.
The fresh tuna steaks are a favourite and purchased our new “huge” flat screen tv there at a knock down price.
Always buy the large packs of blue shop towels and excellent winter gloves for snow blowing.
Worth the membership for the large blocks of cheddar cheese alone.
Happy eating.
I hope you’ll report back about the chicken. We used to get it a lot but recently we indeed found they’re tasting off. Pity.
We were eyeing their Black Forest cake the other day. Haven’t tried it yet. That Tuxedo cake looks awesome.
I like their cheese deals. Their English Coastal Cheddar is great. They have some great Dutch cheeses as well (their Beemster is good, too). I recall they also once had Guinness Cheddar and wish they’d have it again (it was around St Patrick’s Day and I keep checking every year).
Bark Thin chocolates are another favorite. And nuts; almonds, Virginia peanuts.
Their ground turkey is a staple.
I could go on. I also like that different Costco’s have different things, and different regions have different specialties. You can even use your membership in other countries. The Japan one we went to was great. We’d love to go to one in Australia and get a huge jar of vegemite.
Yes! I forgot about their Coastal Cheddar! Can’t be beat for price or value/price IMO. Love their bulk cheeses. Their Kirkland brand Pecorino Romano is wonderful.
Somehow, Costco manages to sell eggs for about half of what grocery stores/supermarkets charge. (Eggs from Trader Joe’s are also cheaper than eggs from grocery stores/supermarkets, but more expensive than eggs from Costco.)
^^enjoying the comments.
We are an extended family of six, so we get Costco for most of our shopping needs.
Two and a half decades ago, I was under the misapprehension that Costco’s business practices were like those of Walmart, so I boycotted the place. I was curious about all the fuss, though, and poked my head in.
When I saw the prices of their pesto and Parmesan cheese, I bowed my head and sold my soul to what I thought was the devil. Man was I relieved when I soon found out that Costco was essentially the anti-Walmart. I am still in mourning over the loss of their huge chocolate cakes and 128 oz. cans of tomato paste.
Before marrying, I sneered at big-box warehouse stores like Costco. But in my decade-long San Francisco East Bay experience, I’ve found that Costco has dependably good quality food, products, and services across the board, often at the best prices. Since product availability and product locations in the store vary, however, it can be both a chore and an adventure to find what I might want.
Mirroring someone else’s comment here, I find the bumper-cars-type behavior of many shopping-cart pushers to be the least fun or compatible part of my Costco experience. I often temporarily park my cart in a less frequented area, so that I can weave through the crowd more efficiently while gathering by hand what I need before returning to the cart.
But, Costco employees seem happier, friendlier, and more helpful than at most other stores and outlets that I’ve been to. The company seems to value its employees.
And some universities might learn something from its perspective on politics:
“As a company, we respect the choices our members make, so we do not take positions on social issues, we are not involved in partisan politics, and we do not contribute money to political candidates or issues. When you visit a Costco warehouse, we want you to feel welcome. And, after gathering much feedback, we have found that the majority of our members appreciate the fact that our atmosphere is devoid of politics—so we strive to keep it that way.”
https://customerservice.costco.com/app/answers/answer_view/a_id/839/~/does-costco-wholesale-make-political-contributions-or-provide-other-political
Yes to neutrality!
Costco stopped supplying my favorite pimento cheese in fall 2020 due to Facebook posts made by the company’s owner. Opinions may vary on whether or not this is taking a position on social issues.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/costco-pulls-palmetto-cheese-founder-calls-black-lives-matter-terror-organization/
Apparently Costco didn’t want to be selling and associating with a product whose owner was taking a very controversial position that could damage the neutral position that Costco likes to project and protect. Seems reasonable, but it’s hard to say for sure what the rationale was. Thanks for the link!
I’m surprised no one has said it yet, but the $1.50 hotdog deal isn’t near as good as it was when the drink was Coke. Granted, it’s a personal preference, but Pepsi is pretty terrible. Especially from a fountain. It’s always foamy (Diet Pepsi).
When the hotdog deal started in the mid ‘80s it was from carts with iced coolers with canned Coke products. In the Phoenix summer heat, it was truly amazing. That was close on to the Price Club/Costco change.
I know plenty of people like Pepsi and nothing is wrong with them, but they’re probably the type of people that do the toilet paper backwards.
The Dried Gourmet Mix Mushrooms by The Mushroom Co is just incredible.
https://www.costcobusinesscentre.ca/the-wild-mushroom-co.-dried-gourmet-mushroom-mix%2C-454-g.product.100336109.html
A handful in hot salted water instantly makes a tasty dark mushroom broth, with the mushrooms themselves rehydrating to a very satisfying texture. They can then be used like fresh mushrooms for further sauteeing etc, or just eaten straight.
Last time they had it the wife insisted on buying 200$ worth of them.
The Costcos in my city are also decent places to work. Good wages (at least for service jobs), unionized.
Rent cars through Costco! The use all the major rental companies, but their prices are always lower.
“I know plenty of people like Pepsi and nothing is wrong with them, but they’re probably the type of people that do the toilet paper backwards.”
Hahaha! And say they’re “honing” in on the problem and continue creeping up foot by foot at a red light while beginning every sentence they utter with “so.”
Has anyone mentioned the lamb chops? From Australia, THICK (~2 inches) so can be cooked nice and red/pink on the inside after searing. Great w the Pesto. Usually ~8 to the package (way more than we 2 little old folks can eat at once), but taste just as good after freezing/thawing.
A bit late here with my response, as always, but I agree with much of the above. Costco’s rose Prosecco is also very palatable and a great deal at either $8 or $9 a bottle.
And agreement on Yalumba’s Viognier, always excellent and a good value (though I get mine from Total Wine, not Costco).
Only HALF a bottle?
I have been a Costco member at 4 times over the last 30 years.
I love the prices and the products; but I’ve always hated the shopping experience.
When I was single, I let it lapse. I mainly went for the excellent selection and prices on their wines (from Europe) in the Costco stores in the Seattle area, where I used to live. I met the Costco wine buyer once (volunteering at a winery work party, he was a friend of a friend): He bought more wine than any other person on earth.
We buy the Kirkland brand Prosecco, which is excellent and crazy cheap.
The Kirkland brand boxed cabernet sauvignon, while nothing to write home about, is very acceptable everyday “house wine” and we consume a fair bit of it (I’m not big on oak in wines, unless very well done, that is very subtle). The Kirkland brand premixed Margaritas are excellent.
The Kirkland brand Norwegian smoked salmon is my personal crack.
I love the food from Costco. They really do amazingly well. The meat is excellent and cheap. Really, I only brave the (bad) Costco shopping experience for the food. And the cheese! Kirkland Coastal Cheddar from England. Great cheddar and incredible price. And the Pecorino Romano.
I have essentially never been disappointed by Costco food. Especially considering the price.
We now shop the Portland, Oregon Costco and we time our visits to avoid the crowds. One must do this if one wishes to avoid long lines.