Posts from the ‘What’s In Store’ Category

Oct 28

What Makes a Grocery Store Gourmet?

The jury (well, me) is still out on Gourmet Fresh, the new grocery store in my bizarrely grocery store deficient neighborhood, that’s owned by the same proprietors of the world’s worst Key Food that shuttered a few years back. I want to dislike it but it seems neutral enough, at least upon a cursory inspection. Still not sure what gourmet means, though.

It certainly looks more appealing your ordinary Brooklyn supermarket, it’s tiny and somehow upscale—I think all it takes is using wood floors instead of linoleum and lots of freestanding metal racks as shelving.

I do my real grocery shopping on weekends at more substantial stores (Fairway or Western Beef if I’m staying in the boroughs or Costco, Trader Joe’s and a Shop Rite or Wegman’s if I’m in NJ) but I tested Gourmet Fresh on three staples I eat nearly every day: Wasa crackers, Fage yogurt and oatmeal.

They struck out in an odd way on the yogurt. They carried the brand in every variety: 5%, 0%, full fat, 2% with honey, 2% with jam…but no plain 2%? The 0%, which I broke down and bought, is just sad and now the rest of my week won’t be the same. $1.99 is pretty standard for NYC, I can’t complain about the price.

$3.39 seemed kind of high for the crackers. I’m blanking what I normally pay for them but I feel like it’s under $3.

They had plenty of oatmeal brands and flavors to choose from. I also think the $3.79 price tag was a touch pricey but typical for the area. I can’t really compare it to the boxes at Trader Joe’s since they’re different beasts.

I don’t know what groceries are supposed to cost anymore. Does $13.15 seem about right? I’m incredibly cheap, even by tightwad standards, so it’s hard to gauge.

I might do a comparison at neighboring…hmm…I had no idea the nearby store that was featured in the New York Times yesterday is called Good Food Supermarket. I know they have the yogurt for maybe a dime cheaper but their brands are more basic and I’m not convinced I’ll find the crackers and oatmeal. But I will see.

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Oct 17

Bulking Up For the Winter

Why don’t run-of-the-mill grocery stores in NYC sell bulk food? This was literally keeping me awake last night. I yelled the question repeatedly from my bedroom into the kitchen where James was doing dishes and garnered no response until my third attempt got a ridiculous “It’s not worth answering.” That’s absolutely not true.

A million years ago when I first moved to NYC I was stymied by the Associateds, Key Foods, C Towns and the like packaging everything up for you in Styrofoam and cling film or plastic containers. What if I only wanted a handful of white mushrooms or half a cup of pecans? It seemed so wasteful to force large amounts of perishables on a shopper.

My genius idea would be selling fresh herbs in bulk. Of course, there wouldn’t be much profit in this business model. I can never use 20 thyme sprigs or even a whole cilantro bundle before it starts to go bad.

I’m still not sure if it’s a space and convenience issue; it’s just easier for a store to present you with ready-to-go items, if it’s hygiene like too many hands touching the goods, that people would just take food and not pay or that New Yorkers have a more difficult time than the average consumer with self-service (I tend to believe the latter having seen way too many jams and general cluelessness at the few stores that offer self-checkout).

My big scam when I was a younger teen and candy was enough to make my day, was filling my baggie with bridge mix and writing down the code for chocolate-covered peanuts, which were way cheaper. I only got busted once, which was no big deal because you could just play dumb. People were more trusting. This was during the era when stores would sell kids cigarettes with notes from their parents (I had a neighbor in high school who legitimately did this, the reasoning being that they had had drug problems and were in recovery and their family was happy to see them smoking as long as it meant they weren’t abusing other substances).

I’d forgotten about the lack of bulk food even being problematic until this weekend when I paid a visit to Wegmans in Woodbridge, NJ, a much higher class of grocery store than the already classier-than-NYC garden state supermarkets I normally patronize. The store is mammoth with spacious rows of anything you could think of (except corn tortillas and polenta in a tube it turned out—what’s up with the maize aversion? Maybe someone read The Omnivore's Dilemma one too many times) including a nice row of bulk food dispensers. You don’t even know the joy I derived from meting out the tiniest scoop of pepitas. It’s very satisfying to pay $1 and some change for what you actually need instead of $5 for a container that will just go stale.

I would’ve explored Wegmans further (and possibly found those corn products eventually) but I was running late to meet friends at Cheeseburger in Paradise just minutes away on the other side of Route 1. If you ever want live covers of all your favorite ‘90s hits (think Counting Crows and Extreme) and a signature cocktail composed of pina colada, rum runner, margarita, daiquiri and blue curacao layers, all in the same glass, garnished with a gummy cheeseburger on a toothpick and fruit wearing sunglasses (they’re called “garnimals”) show up at this Jimmy Buffet chain at 9:30pm on a Saturday.

Oh, and why don’t they sell bulk food in NYC?

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Sep 29

As American as Processed Cheese

Normally, I enjoy a New Jersey grocery shopping excursion (I’m still trying to muster interest in the brand new Trader Joe’s walking distance from my apt.) but this weekend I was too preoccupied to tag along with James.

As a result, items I might normally veto turned up in the cupboard and fridge. The first being Lofthouse cookies. I have extolled their virtues before. I don’t know what the hell they put in these cake like treats (ok, I did see red flag partially hydrogenated oil on the ingredient list) to make them so irresistible.

They’re unusually soft and create a satisfying substantial feeling on your teeth when you bite down. Coupled with a thick swatch of ultra-sugary frosting, it’s the perfect sugar cookie. The only disconcerting aspect is why in September they’re selling a version with springy yellow icing and perky sprinkles. I would’ve imagined oranges, browns or blacks more seasonally appropriate.

I try not to eat more than one sweet thing a week so this tray of Lofthouse cookies is big trouble. If I were an eating disordered freak I would either scarf the whole batch then puke or toss the whole container in the trash before I could get any ideas. But I neither purge nor throw away perfectly good food so I’m going to have to learn to get along with the Lofthouses as long as they’re sharing living space with me.

Later, I discovered a plastic-wrapped Styrofoam tray of sliced white American cheese. I’ve never liked those shiny, completely unnatural non-melting orange squares that you can sometimes pick up for 99-cents a pack at fine stores like C Town. This form of processed cheese is thicker and more hefty in texture like the Kraft thick singles.

I love processed cheese. I do. I’d never buy it (my own contribution to the crisper drawer is a raw milk Abbaye St Mere) but I can’t resist its salty, creamy charms. I prefer it to a mainstream cheddar (real Cheddars—I’ve actually been to Cheddar, well driven past the town—are a totally different beast) even the Tillamook I grew up with.

In grade school, kids would take turns helping out with lunch service. I can’t even remember if this was voluntary or not, I think you got free lunch in exchange but it wasn’t a low-income program. For me, the best part was sneaking into the walk-in fridge and furtively pinching a mouthful of grated orange cheese stored in giant rectangular bins on the shelves.

I didn’t outgrow my passion for fake cheese either. In high school, my friend Tara had what I guess you could call government cheese in her fridge, and I know that on at least one occasion I sampled some. Maybe it was gauche, eating a family’s free food, but it was that good.

Thankfully, I’ve never developed a taste for Kool Aid, bologna or Miracle Whip. You have to draw the line someplace. We do have a bag of those individual serving ice creams with little wooden paddles in the freezer, though.

And apparently these types of “cheaper high-margin” products are in. They’re being touted as wallet-friendly according to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required). Lower end rather than premium brands—Banquet frozen dinners, Campbell’s condensed soup and yes, Kool-Aid—are all getting a marketing push. Say goodbye to Pringles Select.

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Sep 3

Sweet Spicy Szechuan Chips

Wah, yesterday I heard “official end of summer” used again on the radio. Do they not mean unofficial? If it’s fall why am I wasting money on air conditioning still?

Fine, the only concession I’ve made to this rumored autumn that we are now experiencing was buying a Cover Girl eyeshadow trio in Halloweeny Dazzling Metallics. I did use a Target gift certificate so technically it wasn’t my money supporting this seasonal mischaracterization.

On the new totally unnecessary items front, I found a few goodies at Shop Rite in Linden, NJ. The store is nothing special, it just happens to be in the same complex as the Target and Old Navy I frequent. It’s not quite the real guard-down suburbs because you have to pay a quarter to use the carts airport-style. Yet, I’m kind of obsessed with this place.

Banana Oreos are nearly as offbeat as those Japanese melon Kit Kats you keep hearing about (or maybe I just keep reading about them). No, I didn’t buy or sample these banana split cookies but I’m happy knowing that they exist.

Chips and soda are two product categories that I’ve never been into from an eating perspective but have always appreciated from a flavor standpoint. They’re not afraid of experimenting.

Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos sounded irresistibly Thai. Nah, I don’t even care much for Doritos but I couldn’t leave these on the shelf. Apparently, Stephen Colbert and PETA approve of these. Who knew that all other Doritos involved cow “raping?” Whatever it takes to bring me cheese, I say.

Taste verdict: Yum, maybe I’ve been missing out all these years I thought I didn’t like chips. These are strangely compelling, and yes, hot and sweet. The odd part is the corn taste in the background. These cheese-free triangles are definitely less classy than the Pringles Select below but far tastier.

I turned around and on the opposite shelf was a new jazzy line of Pringles in bags instead of cans. Select, of course. Szechuan barbecue? You know there’s not going to be a smidgen of actual Sichuan peppercorn on these, it’s just fancy code for spicy. What interested me in addition to this new Asian bent to the snack aisle was that these aren’t even potato chips. They’re rice crackers. Strangely, both bags of chips/crisps are purple. Is that the signifier for exotic?

Taste verdict: Not spicy or barbecuey. The predominate flavor is salt and the texture is kind of chalky but not unpleasant. They’re smaller than I expected too. You could easily eat a whole serving (28 crisps—hey, that’s not bad) without even realizing it. I think these would be a big seller if they were sold at Trader Joe’s under their house label but as Pringles I’m not sure how they’ll do.

Once again, I’m more swayed by the packaging than the product. I don’t eat hot dogs or chili (damn, I’m sounding picky) but Ed’s and Steve’s sauce is adorable.

That’s a lot of pork roll varieties. In the same refrigerated section at shin level was a a box of ready made pancakes. Just heat and serve. Frozen waffles seem totally normal to me but refrigerated pancakes are freakish.

Ok, you’re killing me with this Halloween shit when it’s still goddamn SUMMER! Those cat cookies are pretty cute, though.

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May 7

Microwavable Molten Cakes & Blue Cherries

Western Beef will always be my favorite utilitarian grocery store, but when I’m suburban-ing it up as I’m wont to do every month or so, I lean on Shop Rite. It seems kind of the same as Stop & Shop, which I’ve had an on and off again relationship with, but it’s a little more quirky, open 24-hours so you can have the place to yourself at night (because most people have better things to do at 11pm on a Saturday) and they sell Greek yogurt (three brands at that–I eat this nearly every day so a store without it is most unhelpful) unlike S&S or Western Beef.

I’m specifically referring to a Linden, New Jersey location at Aviation Plaza; I can’t speak to the whole chain. This is an area I’m growing fond of in general because it satisfies most of my rudimentary shopping needs and desire for breathing room (never mind that it’s a 20-mile drive, $16 in tolls and I’m not calculating gas). Despite the sense that there is a sizable African American and Eastern European population (the ATMs have Russian as a language choice and there’s a Polish & Slavic credit union in the same strip mall. You can tell a lot from an ATM. My bank, Capital One, formerly North Fork, formerly Greenpoint, which I only joined because it was the most convenient bank when I lived in Queens, is the house bank at this Shop Rite and even has an office right inside the entrance with two sit-down windows. The fast cash option here is $40, the lowest I’ve seen. In Carroll Gardens it’s $60 and the Wall St. branch near my office it’s a whopping $100. You can also choose to take increments of $10 from this ATM, which is something I haven’t seen offered since my Portland days and they probably are up to a $20 minimum by now.) it feels like a Roseanne neighborhood.

There’s a bowling alley, taverns and lots of ratty motels. If there were a slew of used car dealerships, junk/thrift stores and no Italian delis, it would be the type of no nonsense environs my grandparents lived in when I was in grade school (when they weren’t living in a mobile home in our yard—I’m not joking, though it was probably only for a few months it seemed like a year in kid time).

If it weren’t for the pesky problem of getting to Manhattan for work, I would buy in New Jersey, this part of New Jersey, definitely not the areas teeming with garish new construction. House/condo buying is a real possibility in the next year (through no means of my own) and I like to pretend that I have some say in the matter. I’ve also been entertaining nearby Red Hook but isolation and scrappiness shouldn’t cost $1 million-plus. Same goes for Gowanus. I don’t like being in the thick of things; I want to grow out my nasty gray hair in peace…er, and then go check out a new restaurant. Food is really the one thing that keeps me enamored with NYC. It’s certainly not the people. Though I’m not there yet and may never be, I do understand why at this very moment my sister and her British husband are scoping out property in rural Southern Oregon (I’m still not sold on the idea of a cob house, however).

But back to Shop Rite. They aren’t perfect by any means (and apparently there was a lazy-eyed fat woman with a pregnant accomplice robbing people in aisle nine a few years ago). They don’t have those self-serve bottle return machines that are not only rare in the city, but always hogged by the homeless (hey, five-cent refunds aren’t just for the destitute). I was thwarted by their lack of loose green beans or even prepackaged ones in Styrofoam and plastic wrap. They only had $3.99 bags of organic, which I wasn’t buying.

But they do have maraschino cherries in rainbow colors. Yes, I’m obsessed with the Roland cherries.

And they have ethnic candles and cookware. I have no idea what ethnic cookware is and don’t think they mean woks. I also love that brands La Fe and La Cena are mushed together into single lowercase words.

I don’t generally hang out in the boxed baking mixes aisle so I was surprised at the amount of molten cake madness on the shelf. Americans love the warm and gooey. Those soft-centered monsters are my biggest culinary pet peeves next to Tuscan kitchens. I will admit to being tempted by the 150-calorie microwavable Betty Crocker Warm Delights Minis even though (or maybe because) sugar is my enemy.

Obviously, there’s more to Shop Rite than snack food and candles but that’s for another time. I have my loyalty card so there’s no doubt I will return for more than just savings.

Shop Rite * 637 W. Edgar Rd. Linden, NJ

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Mar 26

I Have Been Known to Drink 99-Cent Wine…

…though not in this decade.

Apparently times are tough. If you’re to believe all the belt-tightening, penny-pinching articles showing up lately, that is. I’m not feeling particularly pinched, or maybe things like the price of milk, white bread and gas have next to no obvious effect on my existence. In fact, I’m more financially stable than I’ve ever been in my life, which isn’t to say rich.

My timing has always been horrible. During boom times everyone I knew was doing well and I was destitute. Now, it seems like everyone is unemployed or sporadically employed by choice, oozing free time and mellowing out while I’m tied to a rigid schedule.

I don’t often have moments where I’m like, “hey, that was my idea” mostly because I don’t have that many ideas. I’m horrible with ideas, that’s why I could never survive as a freelance writer, I find pitching extremely painful.

But yesterday I couldn’t ignore mentions of The 99¢ Only Stores Cookbook everywhere (ok, just on Chow and NPR) It made me sick and panicky, er, then I noticed it was blurbed by Jack Black and felt a little better. I’ve had an obsession with 99-cent store food for years. Ages ago when I took a horrible, miserable food writing class, I kept pounding away on this piece about 99-cent store food but it seemed lame, there wasn’t much of a hook and it just didn’t seem relevant to a larger audience (like much of what I have to say).

So, one woman ran with the idea of 99-cent store food and got a book deal. Fine. Then today in the New York Times it’s 99-cent food all over again, “How to Survive in New York on 99 Cents” written by an “investigative humorist” and maybe I missed it but they don’t seem to even reference the book, like it was a spontaneous, simultaneous genius idea.

I have no idea why I would feel defeated and incensed by a book and article about 99-cent store food appearing at the same time, it’s a gimmicky flash in the pan conceit, and one that I never even perused with anything resembling a vengeance.

I wonder if The 99 Cent Chef feels left out.

Pretty bottles photo from Ghetto Wines

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Jan 23

Knock it Off, Please

Prince_bag_2
Thinking Twice About That $400 Handbag? Pshaw, hundreds are for
bourgeois losers; get back to me when you’ve made the leap into the
thousands.

Actually, I contemplated that leap for about two minutes yesterday. I doubt I’ve ever spent more than $40 on a purse so it was a remarkable thing to realistically ponder. I do not covet expensive items (well, minus Richard Woods’s colorful block printed woodgrain furniture. I can’t conjure up any way to justify $5,500 for a plywood dresser at this point in my life) and have never understood followers of brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. I can’t think of anything less imaginative.

I don’t like aspirational status symbols. But I do like these Richard Prince for Louis Vuitton bags. I don’t follow art and wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m a Richard Prince fan or else I would’ve gone to his Guggenheim retrospective that ended a few weeks ago. Yet, it was his ‘80s work, especially the joke paintings, tickled me as an art student in the early ‘90s. I wasn’t old enough to appreciate them during their heyday (though I imagine a young Manhattan teen might be so savvy or are Gossip Girl types a modern invention?)

Or at least I like the idea of these $2,000+ bags, which is why I will wait and see what the counterfeiters do with these designs. Isn’t buying a reproduction of an appropriation artist’s joke-themed “art” the ultimate joke?

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Nov 17

Are You Chicken?

Pollocampero The last Wal-Mart I went to only had a lame Subway inside. I’m not one for dining in discount stores anyway (and as much as I like cheapness and crap, Wal-Marts tend to give me the creeps—they’re always heavy with a crestfallen vibe that’s barely masking something violent. What, I don’t know, but they always exude potential danger. There was even something scary about the rendition of “Pop Goes the Weasel” blaring from the ice cream truck cruising the parking lot at the one in Linden, NJ that I last frequented. After the song cycle would finish, this crazy cartoon sound effect “boing” would reverberate like the worst jack-in-the-box ever was popping out and coming to get you, but then, I’ve always been scared shitless by jack-in-the-boxes) but I might change my tune if there was a freaking Pollo Campero tucked between those Faded Glory brand denim shorts and Looney Tunes nursing aide uniforms .

I knew we were behind the times in NYC. We couldn’t even sustain two Guatemalan fast food chicken franchises in a city of 8 million, yet they flourish elsewhere in the US.

Despite a sad lack of fried chicken, I might have to make a Wal-Mart visit this weekend because I’m seriously coveting this wood grain tablecloth. I have no idea when or why this faux bois thing became so out of control, but I’ve been buying it up for the past few years.

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Nov 16

Are You Chicken?

I knew we were behind the times in NYC. We couldn’t even sustain two Guatemalan fast food chicken franchises in a city of 8 million, yet they flourish elsewhere in the US.

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Nov 12

I Went All the Way to Forest Hills and All I Got Was This Lousy Peanut Butter Granola Bar

“We should’ve gone to New Jersey,” was one of the first things I heard after shoving my way into the new Queens Trader Joe’s. Ah, no truer words have ever been spoken by a stranger. (I rarely go in for message board posting and have yet to chime in on this egullet discussion, but I am a proud car-owning [well, car-owning household] New Yorker who chooses to go to New Jersey for food. Not so much for hidden gems as for chain restaurants and big box stores, which is why I haven’t gotten involved with the foodie back and forth.)

Where else can you pick up some chocolate-covered edamame and satiate all of your scrapbooking needs in the same shopping trip? Welcome to the borough's first Trader Joe's and Michaels Crafts.

I refused to believe James’s prediction that the latest Trader Joe’s addition would suck by virtue of being in NYC. It bummed me out that we missed opening weekend while in Beijing, but that also allowed two weeks for any initial crowds to die down. I don’t want to be negative all the time, so on the ride over I trying to justify how the Forest Hills location is so isolated (no subway access) that it would keep away the riff raff. Instead, it’d only be local curiosity seekers and intrepid yet misguided folks like us who should know better.

I was wrong. It was a nightmare. My photos don’t convey the crush, but the aisles were impenetrable. It was no less packed than my first and last Union Square TJ’s foray (and the paunchy, non-young employees here were most definitely not art students/candidates for American Apparel ads) Carts were pointless, though it didn’t stop people from trying to approximate normal shopping behavior anyway, creating irreparable traffic jams.

I wanted to grab four yogurts but couldn’t even get within arm’s reach of the shelf. I eyeballed a wedge of Cambozola yet was kept from it by a solid wall of zombies just standing and staring at the cheese case like they’d never seen dairy products before. The granola bar section never materialized at all, and settling on peanut butter bars from an end display instead of finding the sweet and salty ones I had my heart set on was the final straw. Plus, they didn’t carry Plugra butter like the New Jersey locations. And no, they don’t sell wine.

I could only be angry at myself for giving NYC the benefit of the doubt. The remedy for my gross miscalculation was to head up the street to Eddie’s Sweet Shop for a soothing hot fudge sundae.

New York does best when it sticks with what it knows; faded, old-timey ice cream parlors are a resounding success while facsimiles of quirky, low-priced faux gourmet chains are excruciatingly bad.

Trader Joe’s * 90-30 Metropolitan Ave., Forest Hills, NY (local press is calling this Rego Park, but that seems a bit off to me)

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Posts from the ‘What’s In Store’ Category

What Makes a Grocery Store Gourmet?

Bulking Up For the Winter

As American as Processed Cheese

Sweet Spicy Szechuan Chips

Microwavable Molten Cakes & Blue Cherries

I Have Been Known to Drink 99-Cent Wine…

Knock it Off, Please

Are You Chicken?

Are You Chicken?

I Went All the Way to Forest Hills and All I Got Was This Lousy Peanut Butter Granola Bar

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