Supermarkets

Various things about Whole Foods have been frustrating me lately -- their increasing tendency toward "Giant"-ism (pun intended), the growing array of pre-cut and packaged fresh fruits and vegetables, the indifference and arrogance even toward customers.

I was annoyed this week when a few things I bought there before were no longer available. Bear with me on this. It sounds petty in detail but it's to make a larger point. I know there are people with real problems and this is not one of them, but this is a blog about food and it is my hobby.

So I ran out of sea salt. LOL, I know, but I am one of those people who thinks they can taste a difference in flavor between sea salt, kosher salt and regular old salt. The brand I've bought twice at Whole Foods is Celtic Sea Salt, which is coarse and grayish and comes in a 1 lb cellophane package. I like it, I've gotten used to how "salty" it is so I can dose dishes properly, etc. No longer there. Ditto for the bulk coarse sea salt WF used to sell. Now they have something called Real Salt, which claims to harvested from ancient seabeds in Utah or someplace. May be good, but I hesitate to buy it because it will probably not be around when I run out again. It seems to me a year or two ago there were half a dozen coarse sea salts on offer, and now I don't see any.

The other two things I could no longer find were smoked oysters and bouillon cubes, two supermarket staples since time immemorial. Very occasionally I like smoked oysters as an hors d'oeuvres, so when I ate my pantry can last week I put a replacement on my shopping list. Gone. In that row were six identical cans of sardines, but not a single can of smoked oysters. (Yes, I asked; it was not a temporary absence, they no longer carry it.) Bouillon cubes, of course, are borderline politically incorrect (salt etc.) but Molly Stevens called for it in recipe as a flavor booster and why not. No sign of them. Instead there was a row of "Better Than Bouillon" -- jars of vegetable-based goop with artificial chicken and beef flavors. Guaranteed they won't be there in six months.

I decided to finally make a long-planned trip to investigate the Harris Teeter in Adams Morgan. Could it be the combination of WF and Safeway that would make one-stop shopping possible and worth the extra distance? HT was a perfectly nice little supermarket, perhaps a notch above Safeway, but not different enough to go the extra mile and certainly no replacement for WF. (For the record, they had the smoked oysters and bouillon cubes, but no sea salt; and they were all very friendly.)

Which serves to remind me that even if by some miracle a Wegman's were to be located at a convenient distance there will never be one-stop shopping and that I should welcome the diversity of multiple providers. By consistently frustrating me, WF has reminded me that I should routinely shop at the myriad other vendors available, none of whom can ever provide one-stop shopping. I go to Vace and ACH in Bethesda far too rarely. I can get more of my bulk food and produce at the Grubb Rd. co-op. Safeway is not great, but it is very convenient for the normal supermarket offerings (betting they have smoked oysters and bouillon cubes, too) . I can look more carefully at the limited offerings at Marvelous Market, Addie Bassin's, the Fishery and other places that stock gourmet foods along with their main products.

So, thank you Whole Foods for being the increasingly crass commercial operation you are and reminding me that the perfect supermarket is, well, a grand mirage.