Written by: Caroline Ludwig
Jungle Jim’s International Market is located in Fairfield just outside of the I-275 loop north of Cincinnati. Over the years it has made headlines and become known for hard-to-find items and delicious treats. Their bathrooms were voted the Best Restroom in America in 2007, they have their own monorail, and the outside of the buildings are wildly decorated. They have an additional location in Eastgate that we haven’t visited yet, but I’ve been told is very similar in offerings and decoration.
We recently took Lilly and Elliot to Jungle Jim’s for the first time. I’m surprised we haven’t taken Lilly there yet but was glad that she got to enjoy it with her baby brother. It was nice to see how the place has changed over the years, and go with Joe who doesn’t have as many memories of Jungle Jim’s as I do.
I’ve been going to Jungle Jim’s since I was a kid. My grandma lived down the street so every few months she would take me and we would watch the animatronics while getting some interesting food to try. Our every few months trips would be broken up by trips with my cousins when they were in town. Jungle Jim’s was known far and wide as a place to get lots of ingredients and food that you couldn’t get anywhere else. My uncle liked to cook and my cousins were heavy into manga and anime and wanted to get their fix of Japanese snacks that weren’t readily available at the time.
I don’t have photos of me as a kid visiting Jungle Jim’s because as my mom told me when I was researching for this blog post, “you usually don’t take photos of your child at the grocery store.” Jungle Jim’s might be known far and wide, but it’s still a grocery store at the end of the day. However, she was able to dig up some older photos that my grandma took. We think she took them around 1995.
Between all the trips I have memories of walking past the animals and large fruit around the fountain outside, watching Elvis dance and sing next to a lot of candy, my favorite cereal mascots singing on a boat, and Robin Hood protecting Sherwood Forest and the treasure he had yet to distribute hidden in the tree. We’d make our parents wait so we could watch the animatronics dance and sing, like our own mini version of Disney where the price of admission was a cart full of food you had never tried before. Our parents would set limits on what we could get, but we would somehow coerce our way into getting a few extra treats.
I recall going with my cousins and blazing through some sections of the store but taking our time through others. We would gloss over the deli section, admire the big cheese, and head straight to the jerky section of the meat department. We were limited to one or two sticks of jerky each so we would be deciding between kangaroo, alligator, and even snake jerky. When we checked out we would split one or two of them in the parking lot so we would all get a try.
Our next stop would be the International section (though really every section of Jungle Jim’s was International). We would head straight to Japan (a few racks of shelves in the Asia aisles) to look for sweets like Pocky and candies covered in rice paper. While Pocky might be pretty easy to find in the U.S. now, at the time it was very rare to find it in a store.
We would look at some of the other aisles, mostly just to look at Sherwood Forest and all of the British things. Next, we would swing by all of the little alcoves for Sweeden, Greece, and a few other countries. The alcoves were decorated similarly to the style of buildings in the country making it feel like you were sort of there. I liked looking at things from my Greek roots and would get a snack or two from there as well. My cousins would usually skip over it, but when it was just me and my Grandma we would watch the video on the history of Jungle Jim’s playing in what I’m sure is the smallest movie theater ever. In the video, you would watch the store grow from a small little farmer’s stand to a huge building full of exotic food.
The animatronics and wild art were a rare sight in the Midwest let alone a grocery store and every year it seemed like something new was added. Since I went there as a kid some artwork of Jungle Jim made of jelly beans was added, an antique firetruck on top of the expanded hot sauce section, a race car, and lots of other things you would not expect to find all in the same place. They have their own monorail that had been by the road for years but is finally functional. There’s even a podcast studio because this “grocery store” has its own podcast now highlighting the workers, food, and events showcased in the store.
I knew the store had expanded but going through with Lilly and Elliot was the first time I had been through the giraffe entrance since most of the remodeling and additions had been completed. There’s another entrance, the rhino entrance, where Starbucks and the beer and wine section are which is where we’ve come in and out the most over the last few years, not exploring the whole store.
The selection of foods at Jungle Jim’s has grown over the years as has their building footprint. When we entered the store it was into what used to be the old greenhouse/plant space and was now full of collectibles for purchase and a few for display only. We had to go past the podcast studio, through the cookware section, and through the pet section before we made it to the old entrance. Thankfully the giant soup can was still hanging out over the traditional American grocery store portion of the store reminding me that my old landmark was still there. Lilly wasn’t impressed by the big cheese, but I did get her to stand near it for a photo.
This is when our shopping started, picking out cheese, and cheese-based emergency snacks. We knew we could be a while and we had snacks, but it’s always good to have a backup option. As we made our way to the bakery I said Hi to Elvis even though he was feeling a little under the weather. We purchased some fresh bread at the bakery and made our way to the international aisles.
Lilly and I lost Joe and Elliot for a bit as we looked for treats in an expanded Japanese section. Instead of being a few sections of shelves, the Japanese section had expanded to over an aisle and some freezer space. We looked over the Pocky but picked up some “milk flavored biscuits” and some Koala’s March crème-filled cookies along with another treat or two. The aisle was crowded so the cart wouldn’t fit, even so, Joe was in search of Liquid Death and got sidetracked, a problem when the two lovely ladies in your life are in search of sweets.
We headed off to Germany in hopes Joe and Elliot would show up there. We eventually found Joe and Elliot picking out Milka chocolate bars and snuck our items into the cart, I then found actual Kinder eggs and put two of those in the cart as well. A quick visit was made to Sherwood Forest where Lilly said, “Woah!” in regards to all of the treasure hidden in the tree.
The kids were starting to get cranky so we zoomed through the rest of the store, but I managed to pick up some olives and small chocolate bars in Greece along the way. One of the small chocolate bars didn’t even make it out of the parking lot before ending up in our bellies. We’ve slowly been chipping away at the spoils of our visit and I’m already making plans for the next time we will go. While Saturdays are crowded with out-of-town visitors (we saw a lot of people stuffing coolers in the back of their car as we loaded up the kids) when the weather isn’t the best it’s a big indoor space we can explore. I just need to make sure our bank accounts are ready for the unplanned items that will somehow end up in our cart.
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