Starfish Market — Local services in Saint John

One of the reasons my husband and I love staying at a villa is for the kitchen. We prefer to have most of our meals in the villa, then enjoy a 2 to 3 high-end restaurant meals during the week.

I am vegan, so I did my homework before arriving at St. John. I decided on Starfish Market and was thrilled with the quality and selections of food.

We were staying at the Westin St. John and caught an open-air taxi to the Starfish Market. It was $20 each way ($7 for each of us, plus tip), but it was worth it.

Immediately, I went to the deli case, as I had seen several prepared salads of interest on the Starfish website. I decided on the cucumber and chick pea salads, which were $10.99/lb., and both were very tasty. I also purchased Morning Farm vegan sausages, which I combined with PictSweet frozen onions and peppers and Simply Potatoes for a breakfast hash.

My husband decided to go the prepared meal route, and it was such a deal! He bought a couple of pizza slices, a steak meal, and prepared breakfasts. He said the pizza was good and nicely seasoned. I was dubious of his steak meal (it kind of looked like Salisbury steak to me), but he reported that it was “real” steak, flavorful, tender, and juicy. He added sides of mashed potatoes and cheesy broccoli. It was all stuffed into a to-go container and covered in Saran Wrap, so it would not leak. The entire steak meal was $20, and was so large that he made two dinners of it. To me, the best value was the prepared breakfasts. For only $5, he got eggs, potatoes, bacon, and sausage. There was so much in each package, that it was enough for two breakfasts.

Finally, I like my Mimosas on vacation. I was nervous how much I would need to pay for Prosecco, but they had an excellent dry option for only $14.99.

When we were ready to leave Matthew and Yvette were kind enough to call a cab for us back to the Westin St. John.

The Dolphin Market is withing walking distance from the Westin, and we heard from several folks that it was very good. However, for the selection of prepared foods at such a reasonable price, we are glad we...

Has a decent selection of products, while their vegetables and fruit selection is spotty, they do have a decently wide variety of products.

The area that seems to be a problem is their meat and fish department, I’ve seen it happen several times now, that when it comes to steaks and fish or even lunch meat they weigh it, package it and print out the label and apply it to the package, but when it comes to shrimp, they weighty it then take it to the back, then come back out with it packaged and labeled. The first time it happened I was a bit suspicious, the second and third time however I would weigh it again and found a variety of a .1-.15 discrepancy in their favor. Before even bagging it, so with a bag could be a larger discrepancy.

Possibly look elsewhere for shrimp, if there is even another...

Disaster.... we pre-ordered groceries to be delivered to our Airbnb and nothing was right. First, they were late with the delivery then we were told a third of the items were out of stock and were also charged for items we didn't receive. The customer service was terrible when we called to ask about the items that we didn't receive. They hung up on us twice and were just plain rude once we actually spoke with them. I know there are supply chain issues but the Dolphin Market had nearly all the items we were missing in stock. I'd avoid this place like the plague, it's an absolute disaster. Go to the Dolphin Market instead. Their employees were polite and helpful unlike those at Starfish. This was a terrible way to start...