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Whole Foods

A few months ago, Whole Foods Market bought out Wild Oats. That meant that our local Wild Oats would, in some far-away moment, become a Whole Foods.

I was very excited about this possibility. Whole Foods has always been better than Wild Oats, and in CA I almost never chose the latter over the former. For one thing, Whole Foods had substantially better prepared foods and a much better meat counter.

So imagine my disappointment last week when my mother and I dropped in to see what changes had been made.

In short: bupkus. Nada. Zilch. Oh, wait. They changed the sign above the door. And the little boxes at the salad bar.

But the prepared foods are the same. Ok, not the same foods - some Whole Foods staples are now available (chicken salad with walnuts and grapes, for example). But the ethos is the same. Take this experience as an example:

I needed a snack. So I perused the choices. Everything looked old, dry and not-especially-clean. Eventually, I picked a chicken tamale. The young woman asked me, "for here or to go?" For here, I would eat it at the little tables not five feet away. So she gave me a plate.

Fine so far. I go to pay at the little counter on the other side of the dining area, and the young lady there takes my money (after quoting the wrong price), but does *not* offer me: any option to heat up my tamale; any utensil or where to find a utensil to eat it with; salsa or any kind of sauce.

I then go to sit down, and find that the table is dirty. The table next to it is dirty, too, and the wind from the door is blowing a local newspaper across the room. What strikes me about that is that the paper belonged to an employee. He was reading it during his lunch break, then got up and went back to work, leaving his trash sitting on the table to blow onto me.

But wait - there's more! I found a fork on the salad bar, which was encrusted with drips of dressing and soup. I then ate about half of my tamale, because A) it was cold! and B) it tasted oddly like cat food smells. Not a success. Mother only ate half of her soup and cornbread, too.

The aisles were the same, the merchandising the same, the sloppy employee behavior the same (at the sushi bar, a balled-up apron left hanging half off the counter...etc.). The one thing we liked about Wild Oats was the butcher, where young Megan was so helpful. She seems to have gone, and they've moved all the chicken out of the meat cases and into plastic wrap in the fridge case. So you can no longer select exactly how much you need, and all the chicken now has an unattractively moist, grayish quality.

In other words: no good changes, and plenty of inexcusable failure. If one had no other choices...

But there's always Fresh Market.

I predict that Whole Foods will find this store a loser until it actually devotes some attention to management, cleanliness, and quality product. Because right now, Fresh Market (for all its minor flaws) is kicking their butt.

Pedicures

Seven years in California changed me. I learned to be decadent. Example:

Once, in Maine, a lovely older lady told me she intended to visit the spa that week. Someone had given her a gift certificate for a pedicure, massage, and facial. She told me her plans apologetically, and said, "I know it's shallow, but it sounds nice." Shallow? I confessed my twice-monthly pedicure habit to her immediately, ignoring her shock.

Apparently, some folks consider personal pampering shallow, and in some areas things like pedicures don't fall under the "necessary" heading. But for me, after my years in the sun-and-smog belt, pedicures are a necessary part of feeling well-groomed.

If you share my view, Lexington can offer you a variety of pedicure choices. I'm sure most are adequate, but one really stands out to me. But fair warning: when I go looking for a pedicure, I'm not looking for a fancy spa day. I don't want to wear a robe, make an appointment, or talk about my chakras. I want to walk in, settle into a nice massage chair, and read a trashy magazine while I go from snaggly to spiffy. I want a place that smells good, is sunny and bright, and where I can feel confident that the nail polish is new enough not to clot like old honey.

So. Recommendations?

Posh Nails, on Todd's Road near Hamburg, is relatively new. They've been in business about 3 months. The space is small, but they have brand-new pedicure chairs, multiple slots for manicures (you can get that with your pedicure in the chair, too), and a nice round fan-table to blow on your hands and feet while you dry. The magazine selection is pretty good (mostly gossip and things like Redbook), and the staff are pleasant, talkative, and skilled with the clippers and brushes.

Best of all, Posh Nails costs the same as all the other places in town, and considerably less than some. In March, 2008, it was $25 for a pedicure, with a steep discount for adding a manicure at the same time.

Compared to other places I've tried (Glamorous Salon and Spa on Richmond Road by Mr. Kabob - not a great job, not super-friendly, very dark place so reading a magazine is hard; the nail place at Hamburg next to the Coldstone Creamery in the same strip as the UPS store - expensive, snooty, and it smelled terrible! We walked out.), Posh Nails is the best. It comes the closest to the pleasant, relatively inexpensive, easy experience I had in California.

Posh Nails, 3100 Todds Road, which is the same little strip-mall where the Buffalo Wild Wings is, and the dry cleaner. Coming from Lexington, take Richmond Road (aka Main Street) out of town toward Athens, turn left onto Man O'War, then left at Todds Road (before you get to Hamburg), then left at the stop sign (might be a stop light in the next 6 months as they widen the road). Turn left into the little shopping center, and the Posh Nails is on the side that faces Man O'War.

Grocery Shopping - Specialty Shops

So let's say you'd like to eat something other than chicken-fried steak.

Indian food, for example.

Your best bet is to visit Sagar, off Man O'War on the east side of town. This little shop sits next to the best Indian buffet in Lexington, and it couldn't be friendlier. Inside, you'll find ingredients ranging from fresh veggies to huge bags of rice. Best of all, there are pre-mixed spice packets to which you need only add meat or veggies, water or coconut milk, and sometimes a little fat (butter or oil for sauteeing, usually). The spices are entirely vegetarian, too, so if you prefer to make cauliflower tikka masala, you absolutely can.

Questions? No problem. The owners and staff jump right in to help if you wonder what to do or what to buy. And prices are low, low, low.

Hours are slightly limited, but the store is family-operated so that's to be expected. If you time your visit right, you can enjoy the buffet next door (Monday through Friday from 11am, Saturday and Sunday from noon), and then waddle over to Sagar and take home some delicious vittles for the coming week.

If you're feeling extra-nutty, you can take in a movie across the street at the discount movie house, or head down Man O'War. In about 3 minutes, you'll be at Hamburg shopping center, and you can fulfill all your most ardent consumerist desires. Well, not all of them. But some.

To get there from town, head east on Richmond Road (aka Main St.), turn left onto Man O'War, then right onto Mapleleaf Drive. Sagar and its companion restaurant (Tandoor) are on the right-hand side of the strip-mall on the right.

Correction

I take back what I wrote about Fresh Market and beef.

Last week, Charles asked what I want to eat for my birthday. "Steak" I said. Charles grills steak wonderfully. Each one has a crispy, charred outside and an inside cooked to order. Delish.

So today, we visited Fresh Market. And for the first time this year (so far as I know, and I go at least once per week), sirloin was on sale. Half off. The day before my birthday.

Nice work, Fresh Market. Very sneaky.

Fresh Market

While Good Foods Coop offers some great stuff, it doesn't carry everything you need in life. Neither does Fresh Market, but in the buffet-style shopping that we prefer, Fresh Market has a niche.

Good Foods really doesn't specialize in meat. I don't know whether most of their members are vegetarians, or their food standards aren't easily met, or what. But they only carry a small selection of local/organic/grass-fed etc.

Fresh Market, by contrast, provides an enormous meat counter stuffed with yummy things. Some of the products are organic, etc., but most are not.

The best options are poultry and pork, because although Fresh Market's beef is gorgeous, it also costs the moon. They almost never run serious specials on things like steak, so if you want affordable beef you'll have to buy a chuck roast or something. When it comes to pork, though, you can get a really good roast, chop, or loin for a reasonable price. Chicken is nearly as good, though the breasts often look a little tired. The roasting chickens are excellent, and usually relatively small (which we like because it's just us eating and even a 2.5 pound chicken is a lot for 2).

The fish counter looks great, but I haven't purchased anything except some shrimp there. The shrimp were bad. I prefer wild-caught American shrimp (for both health and political reasons), and I failed to clean them before boiling. Oops. They were nasty. But this is really my fault, so you can't blame the vendor. If you're looking for fish in Lexington, I think this is the best choice, by far.

Fresh Market sells other things, but they tend to be more eye-candy than real groceries. This is true for two reasons:

1. FM has some inventory problems. One week, there will be buffalo burgers in the freezer. Next week, only buffalo steaks. Then there'll be a sign at the butcher counter saying "ask for buffalo burgers, we'll get them!" and when you do, the butchers claim they're out in the freezer section. "Uh, no, they're not. And what about this sign?" So they go look. Some weeks, they've got them (at the butcher counter), some weeks they don't. The sign remains. Ditto apple juice in certain containers. Ditto certain frozen pizza items. Ditto snow peas (or, really, any green veggie in a smallish package). etc. So one reason to shop elsewhere for other groceries is that you can't count on FM to have them every time.

2. FM is expensive. Seriously expensive. Sometimes, veggies will cost twice the price elsewhere, but I have not seen a massive improvement in quality. On something like a peach, this is a problem. I'd rather wait and buy my peaches at the Lexington Farmer's Market than spend too much to buy poor peaches at FM. And an ok apple is an ok apple whether at FM or at Meijer. Dry goods can be much, much more expensive. Carolina rice? Sounds great! But not at $8 a pound.

So you probably wouldn't want to shop exclusively at Fresh Market. Especially if you like to buy shampoo once in a while. But for meat, seafood, and a few other things (the breads are good, and they carry organic milk and good yoghurt), you'll find the quality high and the selection pretty good.

Best of all, Fresh Market is located just off New Circle Road, on Tates Creek Drive. From town, just drive south on Tates Creek, and it will be on your right before New Circle (4). From New Circle, exit at Tates Creek and turn to head into town (right, from the inner loop, left from the outer loop). It'll be on the left at the second light.

Wild Oats is a nice store, and hopefully nicer soon thanks to being purchased by Whole Foods. But you have to risk your life (or sanity) to get there because the exit/merge off of New Circle is terrifying. Fresh Market offers much the same experience and product, with a lot less white-knuckled-horror.

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.