I’ve spent a lot of time in supermarkets. It’s not so much that I buy a lot of food, as that I like browsing the aisles; I like looking at product. When a new store opens in the area, I check it out within days of the “Grand Opening”. The floor plans and layout all follow a similar logic, and it’s no mystery to me where things are located. I grab a carriage, drop my handbag in the basket, and enter a private zone where I wander through the store, checking out what’s on the shelves and in the bins.
In the tony suburb where I grew up, there were delicatessens, specialty food stores, butchers, grocery stores and greengrocers. Each spring, when the promise of frost disappeared, farm stands opened, spilling their colorful wares onto rough-hewn wooden tables and carts. My mother knew all the shopkeepers and spent hours going from one favorite to another, sometimes bargaining for the best deals, always engaging in conversation. In each shop, the staff knew her by name, and had a treats – cookies, slices of salami, or spoons full of ice-cream for me and my brother while we waited for her orders.
When I was little, the supermarket concept was in its infancy. Larger stores, offering wide varieties of foods and household goods for lower prices were starting to pepper the post-war suburban landscape. The A & P was the closest thing to today’s megastores, with its Ann Page products and shelves full of brightly colored packaged goods. Food was less expensive and almost as good than at the smaller stores, and as my father’s jewelry business limped along, competing with discount department stores, provided better value for my mother’s dollars. Daitch-Shopwell, a small-chain newcomer, opened its flashy showcase store in the local shopping center. It had a bakery, in-house butcher and lavish displays of fresh fruits and vegetables, charging less money for more goods than the local purveyors were able to do.
In 1954, soon after the store’s long-awaited appearance in town, we moved into our just finished new home. My family piled into the metallic green Dodge for a stock-up shopping trip. When we watched a sleek conveyor belt whisking our purchases past the check out girl, I was shocked to see that my parents had shelled out nearly $25, filling up 13 brown bags with food and cleaning things. I had never seen my mother spend so much money in one place or buy so MUCH stuff.
After I graduated from college and moved into my first real apartment, there were many other supermarket options – Purity Supreme, Star Market, Stop and Shop, Johnny’s and more. The closest one to me was the huge Star Market – the flagship store of a New England chain. It was spotless, the staff was helpful and the choices, considerably vaster than I needed as a single woman. I could walk there from my apartment, and when I was bored or lonely, I did. Occasionally, I’d bump into people I knew, and sometimes I’d be lucky, meet a cute guy and flirt a few minutes away.
When I was in my early thirties, a new type of store appeared – the discount supermarket. Cambridge Warehouse Foods was hidden in the back parcel of an industrial park. Its owner, Matthew, whom I ended up dating, had glommed onto a brilliant idea – to sell overstocked and underappreciated foods at lower prices than the traditional supermarkets. He had set up a hodge–podge of fire sale shelving and cold cases, then, filled them with all sorts of packaged goods, produce and meats. A customer could never count on finding the same things from day to day. It was, however, a treasure trove of hard-to-find and exotic foods. As a foodie-in-training, I was in hog heaven. In Matthew’s playground, I found papayas, pate, puff pastry and more. Food shopping was more like a trip to the local fleamarket, with new and wonderful things to be found around every scruffy corner.
After a while, my relationship with Matthew and his emporium fizzled out, and he lost his lease. I moved on with my life and into the role of wife and mother, as well as continuing with my teaching. Supermarket trips became more hurried and focused. I missed the leisurely browsing and strolling of my single years. My daughter first wanted to sit in the carriage, where my handbag used to rest, and later, as she grew into childhood, wanted to push. Of course, I’d let her, but secretly was hoping she’d give up – I missed that feeling of that plastic sheathed metal bar under my hands. Some nights, I’d steal away, after she was in bed, to the therapeutic mindlessness of perambulating the shelves and aisles.
House swapping in Europe, with my husband and daughter, forced me to become acquainted with Old World interpretations of the American supermarket. In Shropshire, I shopped at Tesco, a large British chain. Instead of the long alleys filled with the brightly packaged cold cereals and pastas I was used to, the Brits filled their store with miles of baked bean offerings. Who ever knew that there were so many iterations of Heinz’s 57 varieties? And what’s with all that candy?
In France, we discovered the colossal Carrefour market where employees roller-skated from one department to the next. The food was incroyable, and the prices meilleur marche. The cheese section alone was worth the trip. I filled my carriage with exotic melons, thick slices of pates and bottled soupe de poissons. The local street markets were equally merveilleux with vendors, proffering tastes of everything they hawked.
We spent two summers in Italy – one in Umbria, and the other in Mantova. Both regions offered inferior supermarket experiences. After we figured out how to insert a Euro into the handle of each carriage in order to gain control, the local COOP in Allerona was a disappointment. Italians, it seems, much prefer shopping at small alimentari or at street markets. In Mantova, the nearest market was part of a German chain, LIDL, which I never figured out how to pronounce. It was a dreary old-fashioned store, much more like those old A & Ps I knew from my childhood.
Most recently, we were in Ireland – not a country known for fine fare. The nearest supermarket, the Superquinn, was adequate, but not worth more than a footnote in my trip journal. This Irish chain offered little more than one might find in any well-stocked 7-11. The most successful foray we had into the gastronomic world of the Celts was at a Polish supermarket; one of many we found in Dublin. Kielbasa, in my humble opinion, beats bangers, hands down.
These days, I try to avoid the standard supermarkets that sprinkle the suburbs. The most interesting food can be found at small markets, much like the ones that were forced out of business in the 1960s and 70s and are stubbornly reappearing in trendy neighborhoods. But, I still crave that aisle strolling experience, looking for gems hidden among the ConAgra dross. When I need my supermarket fix, I find myself making excuses to drop into Stop and Shop or the new massive Market Basket in Chelsea. After swiping the carriage handle with an anti-bacterial wipe, I drop my handbag in the basket, and do just what my mother did many years ago. But now, after my purchases move along the belt and are electronically scanned, $25 buys me barely enough to fill one paper or plastic bag.
