Grocery Store Musings

Ralph’s is closest. This counts for a lot in a pinch. If I’m part way through mixing a biga into the remaining quantity of water necessary to get my next loaf to 80% hydration and I realize I’ve run out of yeast then Ralph’s will do in a pinch. They have most everything, with the word most doing some Olympic-level heavy lifting in this sentence. There are certain things that are just annoying. The isle with personal/bathroom/beauty products is in a permanent state of lockdown - metal cages wound across the entrance denying admittance to anyone without an employee chaperone. I understand shoplifting is an issue facing many retail operations but if I ever have to ask a store employee to grant me access to something then I’m not buying it. Ah nuts. They don’t even have yeast. Off to Amazon Fresh then.

The grocery store arm of America’s preeminent evil corporation that is not Whole Foods is quite a pleasant store to be in. It feels breathy and open. Very few barricades. Nothing comes to mind that is locked behind plexiglass waiting for a staff key. The problem with Amazon Fresh is that everything seems to be a worse version of what you’d get in Whole Foods. Just like CostCo, I am fond of the Whole Foods pizza in a cheap-and-cheerful sense. I wouldn’t say it’s amazing pizza but when you’re hungry and unimaginative it will absolutely do in a pinch. Amazon Fresh pizza looks like Whole Foods pizza made using the instructions in the employee manual at Chuck-E-Cheese. I couldn’t tell you what it tastes like because I’ve never eaten it. I’ve never had Chuck-e-Cheese pizza either. I’ve also never eaten melted bitumen directly off a paved road. It just didn’t look great to me.

Vons is closer than Whole Foods but further away than Amazon Fresh and feels like it has cheaper produce than Ralphs. It fills a gap in my grocery shopping experience that I never knew existed. The wine selection is almost impressive and they’re guaranteed to have a variety of brands of pickled banana peppers. Banana peppers - so common in America and so foreign to me. The first time I saw them in a salad bar I was amazed and had to check twice to see what I was looking at. I’ve since fallen in love. The kind staff at Zankou know well enough to heap them upon my order with reckless abandon. Like gold but shining brighter to me.

Whole Foods is close to Vons and makes visiting convenient with an ample car park which I understand is unusual for Whole Foods. I always park far away from the entrance. It’s easier to get out, and to walk to the sliding doors beckoning you inside only takes 30 seconds. Whole Foods has a top tier of quality for what they do, which is to operate on a medium tier. I know I can come to Whole Foods for a wide selection of organic vegetables. For slightly more obscure products I can usually rely on being able to find blackstrap molasses in its significantly sized aisles. I understand that you pay for the experience. I'm not a fan of the salad bar as much as I was when I worked close by. The butchery is beautifully presented. The fact they have a separate section for barbecue warms my heart. The fridge section reserved for plant based foods always manages to surprise me with ingenuity and creative thinking. I would have never thought to make noodles out of kelp but turns out they are wonderful.

Vallarta is a newer one for me and will require an exclusive post to even begin to scrape the first layer off the amazing cornucopia available within. TLDR get the tortillas.

Erewhon is much further. Erewhon is a destination in itself. I won’t find myself doing any regular cadence of shopping here due to the barely-manageable parking situation and the prices that could subsidize a large garage to help with the barely-manageable parking situation. But their prepared food is excellent. If not overly expensive. And the Green Goddess smoothie will continue to have me scheming on ways to increase my income so I can drink it every day.

Not featured: Trader Joe's (a world unto its own. Light of my life) Smart & Final (unremarkable) Jons (Vons with a J) Sprouts (I hear the sandwich combo is wonderful but it’s not conveniently located) and numerous others that we are lucky to have dotting this finest of cities for the grocery-inclined.