Category: Groceries

More on Trader Joe’s

A while back, I warned against the rising tyranny of Trader Joe’s, esp. w/r/t food served at parties. Indeed, my friend Jen of St. Louis confirms this creeping trend:

We have had one for over a year now and I swear there is not a party anywhere where some Trader Joe’s item doesn’t show up. (And people are still all like, “Hey, I got this at TRADER JOE’S!” Hopefully that’s going to wear off soon. The cult of the new food thing in St. Louis is very strong. It’s been almost three years and you still basically can’t go to Cheesecake Factory at a decent dinner hour, there are so many people.) Anyway, the TJ’s party food thing, which isn’t a bad thing, really, it just gets repetitive. I mean, how many times am I supposed to encounter the “four flavor hummus” with excitement? I mean, dump a can of beans in the blender, people, it’s not hard. I enjoy the two-buck Chuck, and they have a nice wine and beer selection but the cheese is just inexcusable. Really, really bad.

…

But the worst thing was gingerbread cookies I bought at Christmas. OK, gingerbread cookies, all soft and pillowy and covered on top with dark chocolate. Sounds like you can’t go wrong, right? No, they actually put the chocolate on the cookies when the cookies where sitting on these little Styrofoam pad things and the chocolate dripped over the top and down the sides and adhered the Styrofoam to the cookie. I swear, this just completely flummoxed me. I had to call Charley downstairs to help me figure out what the hell was going on with these cookies, cause you pick it up and it looks like maybe that white thing on the bottom isn’t Styrofoam but maybe, who knows, something else ’cause the chocolate is holding it onto the cookie, so surely you are supposed to eat it, right?

So after a mouthful of Styrofoam, I had to dissect the cookie. The only way to eat those cookies was to take a knife and cut off the Styrofoam.

Insane.

Enjoy the four flavor hummus. You will be seeing it soon, I predict.

This is another benefit of living in Queens–physical distance from the TJ’s in Union Square, combined with our own laziness, means I will probably never get around to shopping there. Likewise, no one has yet arrived at my house with a TJ’s product in hand. Not that it’s bad. I just want it kept in check. And no four-flavor hummus, ever–not when we’ve got Sabra!

Trade Scare in the Times

Following a great story on souvlaki stands a week ago, Astoria gets more props as the 30th Ave Trade Fair is written up in the Sunday Times today, in a story about its rapidly growing selection of Brazilian groceries. I knew the Trade Scare was awesome, but this story quantifies it: the place stocks food from more than 50 countries. Interesting to see, too, that Brazilian food is now the third most popular type sold–what ranks No. 1 and No. 2? Judging from the awesome selection of split peas, I’d have to guess Indian, but what’s the other? Guesses?

I’m also a little suspicious that the owner of the Trade Fair is “Venezuelan.” Not with a last name like Jaber, he’s not.

Anyway, the story is sort of the standard immigrants-finding-their-way piece you see in the City section, but set in the grocery store, so that

[i]n these aisles, taste and memory intertwine. Those who can’t afford to visit their homeland, and those who are in the United States illegally and fear they would never be able to visit home and return, can at least savor a flavor of the land of their birth.

A little smarmy, but I can’t criticize. The Trade Scare is a genuinely heartwarming place…as long as you don’t gouge your own eyes out in frustration in the “express” lane first.

Apricoty-fresh

I just bought some new toothpaste, which doesn’t seem like it has to do with food. But in this case—in the case of Tom’s of Maine apricot-flavored toothpaste—it has a little too much to do with it.

When I placed my order on drugstore.com, I didn’t really think it through—I like apricots, I need toothpaste.

And when I first used it, I had no real objection—tastes kinda like apricots, foams up, generally seems to do what’s promised on the plaque-stopping and cavity-preventing fronts.

But after several not-quite-satisfying toothbrushing experiences, I think the truth is that apricot flavoring is just too much like putting more food in your mouth, just when you’re supposed to be cleaning every trace of food from your mouth. It’s very confusing.

Mint—that’s no problem. It’s not a food, just a flavor, and it comes in so many fake-mint varieties, from Wint-o-Mint to Smashmint (the latter only found in the Dutch raver’s favorite gum, Sportlife).

Cinnamon—kinda cheesy in a junior-high, gum-cracking kind of way, but it doesn’t make you think of food. Ayurvedic fennel-and-whatnot—also fine, because my closest flavor associations are with ouzo, which isn’t really food.

But apricot—well, I think of jam, and Austrian omelets filled with the stuff. I think of chewy dried apricots. I think of ‘amr al-din, the hot apricot-puree drink you get in the Middle East during Ramadan. I think of the fruit right off our tree when I was little, really the only good fresh apes I’ve ever had.

What I’m getting around to saying is, I don’t think it’s a good idea to use a toothpaste that just makes you hungry again.

Warn a Brotha: in the grocery store

And by “brotha,” I of course mean a fellow food lover. THIS is what everyone should be warned about:

This vile new product, this thing they call the “Grapple” (that’s “GRAPE-ul”–see the diacritic mark?)–I saw it in the grocery store and was purely horrified. But did I share my knowledge with my friends and loved ones? No, I kept my lip zipped. And so you see the results.

The GRAPE-ul wound up in my own house, in my own trash can, after three separate people’s taste buds had been violated.

A Grapple, see, is a grape-flavored apple. The first time I laid eyes on it, I was drawn to its shiny individual-apple-shaped packaging and its placement in the organic section of the grocery store. Of course I was thinking how reprehensible it was that plastic packaging was considered organic, so I stomped over to snort in disgust within the packaged-apple’s hearing range. Halfway there, though, I started to feel a small welling up of hope–perhaps this was some exciting new apple? Some insanely delicious thing that would make me forget all about the packaging and just be utterly delighted in modern farming miracles?

Well, I got up close, I saw it was a GRAPE-ul, and then I read the very, very fine print: ARTIFICAL GRAPE FLAVORING.

What?!

I snorted very audibly, tossed the box back down, leaving it all askew on the tidy organic-stuff shelf. That was the only warning I left to others, however.

Last night, I sent Peter out for some last-minute grocery shopping. He came back with fish and shrimp and shallots…and a box of “Hey, these looked cool–look at their funny packaging! What do you think they are? Some cool hybrid fruit?”

The invasion was complete. I even took a bite out of one. So did Susannah. So that was three bites out of three separate apples, plus one untouched, so we didn’t feel quite so wasteful about throwing them all in the trash, I guess.

They tasted exactly like grape popsicles. The whole kitchen smelled like “grape,” and made me think of past summers of grape Flav-R-ice, and how my throat would itch when I ate them too quickly. That can’t be good for you.

I am consciously sounding like Mayor Bloomberg when I say, “People, what’s wrong with just plain apples? They’re not that hard to eat. And they don’t taste bad either.”

And I sound just like me and the cranky guy on the corner when I say, “What is the world coming to?” But clearly that’s not a sharp enough warning.

Ripe to You? Ripe to ME!

Ripe to You is the best thing that’s happened to me this winter! Well, I guess life-saving surgery is up there, but a 20-pound box of mixed citrus flown straight from California is also a fabulous treat.

Thanks, Saveur magazine for tipping me off to this gem. Thanks also to Peter’s colleague who is a devotee of mail-order food, and who was running through a list of tasty treats (none of which I can remember now–some kind of marshmallow cookie things, at least) that he received regularly by post. This litany of gift boxes must’ve set Peter and me in the right mood to throw down the cash ($35 for a 20-pound box seems reasonable…oh, but wait, the shipping…ouch).

Also, I was missing California a little. I still can’t get the image of the one farmers’ market stall in Santa Monica that dealt in nothing but tangerines. There were about 80 varieties, all with free samples out. It was like a dream. I began to taste each one, to make an educated decision, but I realized it was hopeless and just grabbed a three-pound bag of some nice ones with the stems still on. Of course they were insanely perfectly delicious.

Speaking of stems, that’s a small selling point of Ripe to You–a lot of the fruit still has stems and leaves on. It looks nicer, and I secretly think it keeps the fruit a wee bit fresher longer. Always, always when you buy supermarket tangerines with the stems on, they turn out to be the best ones you get all winter.

Also, Ripe to You is educational. Did you know the minneola is a cross of a grapefruit and a tangerine? I did not.

Oops, I think I may have eaten all the minneolas already.

Trader Joe’s — A Rant

Although I don’t dislike Trader Joe’s quite as much as this guy, I have to say he’s right on in his criticism of their pushing prepackaged, precut vegetables:

It’s none of my business how people spend their money, but I can’t help but think that money spent on peeled veggies could be better spent on a bottle of wine, a dry-aged steak, or a bottle of white truffle oil. Celery and salad greens are supposed to be cheap. I can’t believe how willing we have become to make them and every other piece of produce expensive.

Trader Joe’s isn’t the only sinner, of course–they just make the veggies marginally cheaper than everyone else. I’m a little bit more disturbed out how I could spend $100+ at a TJ’s in Connecticut (I had a job interview up there–back when I wanted a job!–and rented a minivan to capitalize on its proximity to TJ’s) and come away with nothing but frippery: not-very-satisfying granola, weird dips, etc. About the only very useful things I bought there were frozen blueberries. (Maybe TJ’s should just shift over to nothing but frozen foods, like that Spanish chain?) The stores strike me as little more than glorified snack-food purveyors.

And I hate to think what this will mean for cocktail parties in New York. I remember someone in LA complaining about how everybody serves the same brie from TJ’s, with the same crackers and the same cheap wine. It could happen here.

Whether or not I do end up patronizing this new, allegedly life-changing emporium (and really, how could I not visit once?), I have but one prayer: Lord, let me never resort to “baby” carrots. Cooking takes a little work, but there’s something deeply satisfying about peeling a carrot with a good vegetable peeler.

Austin, Tex.: Grocery Store Shangri-La

So Jefe, whom I hold responsible for my starting this blog, has moved to Austin. Or he’s in the process of moving. Even though I hardly ever see the guy, and was no part of his life in Oklahoma, it all brings a little tear to my eye.

It’s not really a sad tear. Or, it’s not really a tear for him. It’s more for me. Because now I’m to the point that unless something truly awful happens, I will not be picking up and completely starting my life from scratch in a new place. And that can be one of life’s most delicious feelings. (I got similarly misty-eyed when my brother left the country for the first time last year, to visit his girlfriend in Italy–just think of tasting really good gelato for the first time! Of getting off the bus and being totally disoriented! Of it finally sinking in that you’re in a completely different culture!)

Loving this feeling might be a little bit of a cop-out. I felt a little addicted to it for a few years, because when you’re busy finding an apartment, getting settled, finding a job, finding your way around your neighborhood (or, if you’re traveling, finding a hotel and a good cafe), you can’t possibly be bothered with bigger life issues and goals. I mean, you get credit just for surviving, right?

(I think this might be a lot of the appeal of long-term living in foreign, difficult cities like Cairo–you get props just for crossing the street without getting killed…who cares that you work for a dull investment bank? And of course, you’re allowed to drink your head off to smooth over daily aggravations. Oh wait–I’m now realizing all of this logic also applies to living in New York. Uh, career? What career?)

Anyway, I digest. The really important thing about Jefe moving to Austin is that he gets to live near amazing grocery stores!

Austin is where Whole Foods got its start, and just about every other store there is fully competitive in terms of olive selection and gorgeously stacked produce. When I first went to visit Jim G. there, one of the weekend’s big activities was grocery shopping, which for me meant running my hands along the shelves and drooling. (I was living Bloomington, Ind., at the time, which didn’t have a lot going for it–although there was one good international grocery, but small, and an Aldi, that pinnacle of socialist grocers.)

But above and beyond Whole Foods was Fiesta Mart, a vast warehouse of Latino goodness that was truly mind-boggling. I might have felt extra boggled, especially by the live mariachi band welcoming shoppers, because I think we went there on a Sunday morning.

A couple of years later, in Cairo, I met the scion of an air-conditioning empire in central Texas, and he told me a funny story about being on a bus tour of the “Holy Land,” a weird, central-Texan-style perk for his dad’s biggest customers, the privilege of being a bulk buyer of air conditioning systems. One of the beneficiaries of this free tour was the owner of Fiesta Mart, who every day wore a polo shirt emblazoned with his stores’ little parrot logo. This guy also might’ve had something to do with running the American flag up a pole next to the Dead Sea and inspiring everyone to sing the national anthem, but I can’t remember exactly.

Jefe also gets to be near Las Manitas, a Mexican restaurant that glows brilliantly in my mind, primarily for its very generous use of avocados, and its great hibiscus drink. And then there’s the good barbecue on the “bad” side of town, the name of which I can’t remember, but could probably navigate myself back to if I had to, and The Salt Lick, outside of Austin a bit in ranchland. It was in Austin I really got schooled on the difference between white and black barbecue.

I’m feeling all teary-eyed here, but it’s only just dawned on me as I’m typing that, duh, now I know someone to visit in Austin again! I’ll pencil in Las Manitas for sometime this summer, then… In the meantime, Jefe, I live vicariously through you. Eat, shop, eat! Go go go!

Best of RG IV, in which I give props to Queens

Joanie and Chachi seem to have stepped out for a moment. Or I’m not hearing their dopey dialogue in my head right now, which I guess is a sign my health is improving? Gosh, those antibiotics were pretty intense.

Anyway, this blog is ostensibly about how much I love Astoria, but the poor nabe hasn’t gotten too much specific attention of its own.

This essay in praise of the local supermarket won’t make you yuk it up the way talk of aggressive thong underwear does, but, people, we should learn to be serious sometimes, yes? Especially about something as essential as groceries.

A moment of somber silence, as the screen goes wiggly and we’re transported back to the cramped aisles of Trade Fair…

January 27, 2004
Astoropolis

Why do I love my neighborhood so? It’s all about the groceries. (Has “It’s all about…” ever had those words tacked on the end?)

When I first got off the train in Astoria, when I’d first arrived in New York and was looking for an apartment, one of the first things I saw was a huge mass of glossy black eggplants, all beautifully stacked in a pile that went well above my head. I love stacks of vegetables. There’s nothing more gorgeous to me than a produce stand in the wee hours of the night (and in Astoria, the stores are open in the wee hours), when all the bruised things have been chucked and all the fresh stuff is neatly arranged. So, considering that most other neighborhoods I’d visited could offer nothing more than a few over-waxed oranges and a limp bunch of scallions, I was totally sold.

In the last five years, you’d think I would’ve discovered all the food there is to buy in my neighborhood, but I keep finding new things. Or learning more about different cuisines and finally realizing what that whole dusty shelf of dried potatoes was for, for instance (next research stop: Peru). And every year a new group of people move in, bringing all their food with them: Brazilians, Yugoslavians, Mexicans (in that order, I think). Could they be showing up just to keep me entertained? Sometimes it feels that way: “Tired of gyros? Try my adorable cevapcici!” “Perk up–taste these cheese-and-shrimp-filled pies!”

Over the years, I get more things pinned down (usually with help from Peter, who has even more free time than me): best source of tamarind concentrate and verdolaga (Hidalgo), only source of reasonably crusty well-leavened bread (small Portuguese loaves at Trade Fair), good mint at the Lebanese grocery (look for sign in Arabic saying “we have Moroccan mint”), fish sauce at the produce place under the tracks, stupendous bacon from the Romanian orange-window place, duck fat from the Hungarian deli. But even as I’m poking around, finding New Zealand honey and green coffee beans and forty kinds of beer, this little know-all-eat-all frenzy is building in me… The more I discover, the more I know I haven’t found. And don’t even mention Flushing or Elmhurst.

So this all culminated recently when I visited the Trade Fair Near Tamara (as opposed to the Trade Fair Near Me). Now the TFNM is stupendous enough, with a great array of treats, including loofahs for scrubbing yourself in the proper Middle Eastern way and numerous brands of dulce de leche, as well as that Portuguese bread, but it is nothing compared to the one at 30th Ave. and 31st St. I’d gone to the TFNT once a few years ago, but it didn’t seem worth a special trip. And I’d been a little deterred from going in because Tamara calls it the Trade Scare, and says she’s had to abandon her basket and run screaming out the door because of the crowds.

But I had a small inkling of its treasures when I was trying to rustle up some goat for Karine (for her own carnivorous New Year’s project), and the guy on the phone at the TFNT spoke to me in Spanish for some reason and told me they had it in the regular meat case. At the smaller TFNM, you could only order from the butcher, and they were out of it anyway. Karine picked up her goat (right inside the front door–which seems like a sketchy, un-temperature-controlled place to put your meat case, but soooo instantly gratifying) and came to my house raving about the place. Apparently they’d expanded.

The first time I visited post-expansion was on a quick errand for Tamara. I was gone for what must’ve been hours. I roamed aimlessly, running my hands over stacks of legumes in every color, every imaginable spice in bulk, Lebanese olive oil for $4 a bottle, up and down every aisle. I doubt they had anything that couldn’t be found elsewhere in Astoria, but here they had it all in one place: Pillsbury Ready-Puff Pappadums next to mulukhiya next to banana leaves in the freezer case, above which hung about thirty kinds of dried Mexican chiles. Whole lamb carcasses next to D’Artagnan duck breasts. Organic Valley European-style butter next to those big green tins of Egyptian ghee. Baltika Porter for 99 cents. Banana-flavored tobacco for the sheesha pipe. One aisle still bears the standard-issue “Spanish products” that Trade Fair must send from HQ in the suburban Midwest, to label the Goya stuff. But at the TFNT, “Spanish products” also includes Peruvian huancaina and chile pastes.

There are some serious logistical flaws–“Trade Scare” is no joke. The aisles are just wide enough for one cart, the lines are often eight people deep, the produce section (more of a produce prison) can be reached only by one tiny passageway, and some children always seem to be screaming on aisle 6. I know there are bigger, more amazing international groceries out there, but I don’t live an eight-minute bike ride from them. I live next door to the people who shop here: The Egyptian families buying mulukhiya and Cheez-Its, the men on their cell phones asking which kind of chana dal they should be getting, old ladies shaking the coconuts in the produce section (oh wait, that was me). I feel very lucky, if a little overwhelmed, to live in the Independent Republic of Trade Fair.

Field Trip to Fulton Fish Market

Last night, in anticipation of Oyster Fest 2005, we trundled down to that venerable NYC establishment, the Fulton Fish Market–which hasn’t yet relocated to the Bronx, apparently, despite the countless nostalgic column inches already dedicated to its impending demise. (July, maybe even September, was the estimated move date somebody gave us last night, with a shrug.) But good thing we got our asses down there anyway, because the Fulton Fish Market really is a hell of a lot more than a bunch of concrete open-sided buildings filled with styrofoam boxes of fish and ice.

Part of the thrill is that it’s the middle of the night (we aimed for 1am, but in fact most vendors don’t start selling till 2am), and we’re in this fantastic marriage of grim and glorious urbanity: a dark, sketchy two blocks under the rumbling FDR, where the asphalt has gone to seed and the only lighting is from the glaring fluorescent-lit concrete bunkers that house about half of the vendors. But immediately to the east is the Brooklyn Bridge, all aglimmer, with the Manhattan Bridge right behind; lights are twinkling off the dark, slippery river, and it feels incredibly calm and gorgeous–if you can screen out the armies of guys shouting, and trundling right toward you on those little pallet tractor things. (All you “warehouse club” shoppers: This is the real deal!)

And it’s a bad idea to gawp at the river view because these guys are also wielding sharp knives and hooks. Hooks like I’ve only ever seen in On the Waterfront. I thought this genius tool had been rendered extinct by shipping containers, so it warmed my heart to see there’s still some commerce in America that requires the loving, individual attention of a big guy’s meaty paw and a nasty sharp hook. One guy we passed was gesturing wildly with his hook in his hand; he apologized when he saw us tourists coming through, because we’re the types who might end up with a hook in the ear if we’re not careful.

The market is not a consumer-friendly place–there are no signs telling you where to park, and it seems impossible to get past a phalanx of refrigerated semis lined up to the north. There’s no cheery market agent, as at the Greenmarket, say, to ask for guidance. We parked in a seemingly random spot by some overpass pylon and hoped for the best.

But it is a surprisingly friendly place overall. It did help that one of our company was a bodacious, outgoing redhead who was genuinely fascinated with these guys’ work. When a sweatshop full of filet-ers noticed us peering into their little aisle workroom, they waved us in, encouraged us to squeeze down the little aisle between them (it was a disassembly line: guys on one side filleted, slipping the carcasses into silvery, squishy heaps at their feet, while guys on the other side skinned the filets) and stare and chat and take pictures. “You’ve had a couple beers?” the Mexican guy I talked to asked me, assuming, I guess, that the only people who would stumble in here at 1am would be drunkards with nothing better to do. No, darlin’, I’m drunk on the beauty of wholesale commerce, I wanted to say, as for once I was genuinely sober.

This was still early, before the market really opened. Quite a lot happened in the hour we whiled away at the Paris Cafe bar (where everyone had been quick to direct us, natch), and when we came back, the bustle had doubled. It was short work to buy 200 oysters and 200 clams, then cart them back to the car, dodging pallet-tractors and hooks all the way. We took another quick stroll around before we left, to see a gigantic plum-red tuna being hacked apart, gold-pink snappers, shad roe (which looked like agglomerations of the lungs I’ve pulled out of quails) and lots of crabs, all rolling-eyed and foaming at the mouth out of panic. I pet some of the crabs on the head to calm them, but crustaceans don’t really respond to that the way mammals do–all the more reason to eat ’em.

We’d seen all we could see (even the truck from Taverna Kyclades, the fish resto near my house, arriving; I have fresh respect for them), and the guys had gotten as much of an eyeful as they wanted. (“I’ve never really noticed Katie’s ass,” Peter said as we walked behind her and heard the whoops of praise from either side, “but in this setting, I somehow have a fresh appreciation for it.”) Oh, and we’d eaten a mysterious chicken-sandwich-in-a-plastic-bag–funny, there were no fishy foods on offer. So we got in the car and drove home, dropping Peter at Penn Station to catch his 3:15am train to Boston. I haven’t been up that late and roaming around without the aid of drugs since I can remember.

So now I know you can get 400 shellfish for little more than $100, and be generously and graciously complimented on your physique and charm by men in rubber bib overalls at 3am. But of course, this is all set to change, and we know that change is bad. The Fulton Fish Market is essential, the seafood hub for not just NYC but a lot of the Northeast, and its social value is measured precisely by the prime real estate, with its gorgeous river view, it sits on. When it gets shunted up to the Bronx, I imagine these guys will feel more than a bit marginalized. But who am I to say? Hunts Point will be indoors (it was pissing rain all last night), and air-conditioned. And it will be closer to my house. Throw in a bushel of crabs, and maybe I can handle a little change.

Happy Eid!


Ah, the gore is just starting to trickle in… Another pic from Adriana’s Eid Adventure–here’s her friend, who I also knew in Cairo, aaaages ago. She’s so grown-up! And she looks so happy. There’s something really inspiring about a whole dead lamb…