gastropoda

The NYC study on the incredible shrinking supermarket was disturbing even to someone who gets depressed walking west and looking north at the Holy behemoth about to invade her own neighborhood, which now has almost equal numbers of food shops and drugstores. But it occurred to me that two ailing industries could be healed with one merger. Just turn all the spaces rented by Wachovias, WaMus, Chases, North Forks and First Republics into something useful. Call them food banks.

For reasons I don’t want to get into (except to say I missed Tamarack Hollow on Union Square on a rainy day), I had to patronize Holy Foods on deadline and noticed something interesting. Michael Pollan’s great advice about shopping the perimeter is not so valid in this supermarket-as-healthy-theme-park. Sure, the produce section is outlying, but much of what otherwise lines the walls leans toward the industrial. Half the meat and fish cases are tricked up, the dairy aisle is loaded with ready-to-eat stuff, another wall is all frozen meats with hefty ingredient lists on nearly every package. I guess it’s not so surprising given how health food stores long ago gave up the bulk notion in favor of organic Stouffer’s and whole-grain Cheetos. Who would ever have suspected the revolution would be processed?

Speaking of misguided markets, the newish Holy Foods on the Bowery is easily a lower level of hell. I wandered in to warm up on a brutally cold afternoon and wound up almost weeping trying to get out — the place is ridiculously huge and Pan’s labyrinthine in its layout. Not to mention scarily empty. I had stupidly thought I might be able to at least pick up some fish for dinner while thawing my digits, but the surprisingly understocked case was looking rather ready to meet its mortician (marked-down Dungeness crab in particular struck me as rent-a-meal). Clearly, what this city needs most is the neighborhood-wrecking fifth St. Peter’s going in near me.