"It's really sad that all our vital services (like supermarkets and grocery stores) are either being squeezed out or not being replaced by similar establishments when the owners retire. When I was growing up here, there were dozens of different stores to get your groceries: Rainbow Market (where you got bunches of parsley and basil for free whenever you shopped there); Aiello's; Pastosa (and its predecessor whose name escapes me); Tony's Meat Market; Fran's Fruits & Vegetables; Bohack's Supermarket; Sal Cusimano's Fish Market; Mastellone's (all within 3-4 blocks of each other on Court); Martino's Meat Market; Pete's Grocery Store; Tony's Grocery Store; Joe's Superette (in its hey-day); Gabriel's Grocery Store (ditto on Smith). And these are the stores I remember where my parents shopped on a regular basis -- I know I'm missing a few.
We had an abundance of places to shop, and all of these stores did very well and stayed in business for decades. If you couldn't find what you wanted here, you probably wouldn't find it anywhere. Of course, many of the owners retired in time, but no one filled their absence. Granted, Met on Smith is not a jewel (and its manager doesn't deserve any awards), but it is a large grocery that serves a purpose -- whether you shop there on a regular basis or just run in for a few last-minute staples for dinner on your way home from work.
While Union Market may be fancy and has a nice selection of items, most of its prices for produce, meats and fish (not all of which are of the utmost freshness) are obscene. Trader Joe's is "fun," if you can tolerate the lines. K&Y Vegetables is ok when their produce is at its freshest. Aside from these places, we now have only Met on Henry, Sahadi's and Key Food on Atlantic as our local supermarkets...and possibly Pacific Green if it survives its lawsuit against its landlord. And thank heaven for Fish Tales which sells the freshest fish I've seen here since Sal Cusimano retired 45 years ago.
If you don't have a car, grocery shopping is becoming more challenging. We truly need a good-sized, local supermarket to fill the void being left by Met/Smith when it closes later this year."
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2 comments:
Re: Gourmet Fresh. Please, please, please be vigilant about checking expiration dates on their food, especially their dairy. I was in there last week and the yogurts were expired by two weeks. That was nothing... some of the cheeses had expired in early April!
Why shop at Gourmet "Fresh" at all, when you could go to Santo's a couple of doors down? They have many of the exact same items for $1-2 less, and are the epitome of what a neighborhood store should be. They are friendly, accommodating, and actually care about their neighbors. While I wholly agree that it is sad to see the old stores disappearing from the neighborhood, we do still have a few holding on-- and the only way to keep them around is to support them as much as possible.
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