Here is a post from my friend Heather:
I move a lot. MD, UT, TX, FL. And every time I move I feel sad about the grocery store I’m leaving behind. Crazy, huh? I’ll miss my friends and stuff, but finding a great grocery store is a challenge.
In Houston I had two stores I frequented, Fiesta and Whole Foods—two stores on diametric ends of the grocery store experience. Fiesta was a local Houston chain that called itself “The Working Man’s Import Store.” It specialized in southern produce: poblanos, plantains, nopales and prickly pear, avocado. Yet it also provided for the many Asian and middle eastern populations in Houston with lychees and assorted melons and citrus. I used to buy avocados there for 70 cents a piece.
Once I got a job and moved neighborhoods, I started shopping at the Whole Foods. The food there was a lot prettier and the clientele a lot whiter. I always wanted to write a Whole Foods romantic comedy because of the crazy mix of politics—it seemed to be the one place that liberals and conservatives actually ran into each other in Houston. The bumper stickers in the parking lot ran the gamut from “W the President” to “F the President.”
My favorite memory from Whole Foods is one Thanksgiving my dad came to visit and we decided to buy some shrimp for dinner. Dad took one look at these giant prawns and said, “Those aren’t shrimp, those are kittens. I’ll take 8.” I steamed them later that evening. They were fantastic.
Here in Florida we have Publix. It’s a regional chain that costs slightly more than the Food Lion right down the street from me. But the company is employee-owned and they provide health care and benefits to their employees, and I figure if I can afford to pay more than that’s something I want to support. Plus everything’s so bright and shiny in there. No displays of hand polished apples like at the Whole Foods, but that isn’t actually necessary to my food experience.
We also have a locally-owned store here called Wards, which buys from local farmers. I shop there when I can plan it in my schedule. It’s crowded and chaotic, but the peaches in the summer are luscious.
Pretty soon we’ll pack up and leave this place and I’m a little worried about my shopping options. I suppose I could plant a garden. That might make my grocery shopping a less intense experience.
3 Comments
Where are you heading to now?
To me, the best grocery store is the closest one.
I wish I could be satisfied with the closest grocery store, but I really need the place to be clean and brightly lit. And I need the produce to look fresh. I know some folks who drive all over to visit several markets, but I don’t find that feasible, so I have to feel like the meat is reliable, too.
We live in the historically black part of town, and there is only one supermarket here, if you don’t count the Walmart. Both these options gross me out. So I end up driving to the other side of town where I have my pick of probably 8 different grocery stores.
I know some people doing research on “food deserts” which are urban or rural spaces with no accessible grocery stores. It turns out, whole populaces are surviving off the food from quick-marts and gas stations, as those are the only food outlets in their area that they can walk to or afford to pay for transport to.
Anyway. With the job market the way it is, we aren’t headed any where right now, but this college town isn’t a long term destination for us. We’ll have to come up with something to do somewhere else.
Heather. I hear ya. I am in serious withdrawals from my beloved Sprouts store in Arizona. I keep telling the girsl every time we go out that I love Iowa except there are no good health food stores. There are actually 2 health food stores not too far from my house but they are nothing like Sprouts and the prices here are so much more than in Az. I am definitely looking forward to all the farmers markets that will start up here in May!