As most new grad students quickly realize, tomato prices in this area seem to be completely out of control. One grad student even wrote that he/she only uses canned tomatoes because of this in another post.
In the last two weeks, I found where you can consistently find what passes for reasonable prices in this area -- $1.99 and $1.49/pound, so I wanted to let everyone know. Both are in Indian groceries that are quite close to each other.
$1.99 gets you a pound of tomatoes at Spice Bazaar located at 4125 Durham Chapel Hill Bl #8b, Durham, NC 27707. This is across the road from the Target/Sam's Club plaza, next to the Spartacus restaurant.
$1.49 gets you a pound of tomatoes at Little India. It's located at 4201 University Dr # 110, Durham, NC. This is located very close to K-Mart. If you're facing K-Mart, drive all the way to the left in the parking lot. There is a tiny shopping plaza right next to the main one, with Little India, an African grocery, and a Thai restaurant called Twisted Noodles.
Incidentally, Little India also has green grapes for $1.29 a pound, and last week had ripe cherries for $2.99/lb. Both places also have delicious vegetable samosas, if you're into that kind of thing (which is how we found it in the first place!)
Dimitri