Good Foods Co-op

One of the great pleasures of Lexington is that despite being a small city, it offers a variety of options for food shopping.

Frankly, we find the local Kroger's groceries disappointing, and while Meier is a good place for dry goods and paper products, the meat and produce won't impress anyone.

All that's fine, though. Because there are other options, quite a few other options, considering Lexington's population. One of the friendliest is the Good Foods Co-op on Southland Drive.

Good Foods feels like an old-fashioned health-food store. You can listen to conversations about the quality of local, organic eggs ("you gotta get more, man, they're awesome!") and browse the seitan aisle. There's something appealingly personal about the whole place.

At the same time, it's merchandised with much of the same sophistication as a Whole Foods, so there are sections for books, ceramics, and alternative medicines as well as a coffeeshop/cafe with a hot lunch bar. There's nothing scruffy or disorganized about Good Foods.

In fact, they've helped us to solve an irritating problem. Our dogs eat an organic dog food produced in southern California: Solid Gold Hund-n-Flocken. For the last year and a half, we've tried to find a steady supply. Wild Oats sometimes had it, sometimes not. The cute local place sometimes had it, sometimes not (they fell off the supply list when they told me to come back on New Year's Eve to get more. I said, "You'll be open that day?" "You bet!" Actually, no. They weren't. But I'm not bitter.). We fluctuated between euphoria and frustration, depending on the bag-stack in the garage.

But Good Foods apparently believes in effective inventory control. How novel! When they carry a product, it's actually on the shelf. Every time. Imagine that. So now we visit the store every other week, and I supplement the lamb-n-rice with Greek yoghurt for me (Fage Total, YUM!) and little tubs of nitrate free dried mango.

The only fly in this ointment is that the meat and cheese sections are thin. You can buy meat there, but true to their values it's local meat. We don't care for the flavor of grass-fed beef, and the prices are high while selection is minimal. So if you're looking for lots of choices in high quality meats, this probably isn't the place. Milk and yoghurt, though, Good Foods carries in abundance. This includes things like buffalo yoghurt, which I tasted. It was gross. But if you like that sort of thing, or if you need goat's milk, Good Foods can hook you up.

For those new to Lexington: If you take New Circle Road to Nicholasville Road, and head into town (right), you'll turn left onto Southland Drive. The Co-op will be on the right, a little ways down, in a shopping center. From town, just head south on Nicholasville Road, the turn right onto Southland, and look for the Co-op on the right.