Whole Goods
Two more days until Whole Foods Market in Green Hills opens to the hungry hordes, and after last week's sneak preview, I'm beginning to see what all the fuss is about. Maybe it was the pendant lighting, or the metal sculpture of a trout leaping over the seafood department, or the samples of melt-in-your-mouth espresso-bean-and-chocolate-chip cookies, or the mosaic of hand-painted tiles made by kids from the local YMCA, or the Viking appliances in the demonstration kitchen. Or maybe it was the siren song of locally grown and organic foods, which Whole Foods works to showcase. But as I roamed among the hundreds of olive oils and gazed at the tasteful earth-tone-tiled walls, I could suddenly see why my friends in Atlanta refer to their Whole Foods as "Whole Paycheck."
A few highlights of the Green Hills store, which opens Thursday in the new Hill Center (after the jump):
ՠThe grill restaurant across the aisle from the seafood department. Order a fish and have it filleted and cooked while you sit at the bar and order a pint of Abita root beer on draught.
ՠ"Saute-and-tell" cooking demonstrations throughout the store.
ՠAn in-house barbecue smoker (burning oak, but they're not averse to hickory—Mrs. Pink asked only semi-jokingly if the store had a BYOW policy) and brick pizza oven.
ՠ18 flavors of gelato. (The era of the Gelato Wars begins in Green Hills.)
ՠA juice bar.
ՠA gleaming Salud! demonstration kitchen with cooking classes for adults and kids, featuring local chefs as well as staff.
ՠA sprawling prepared-food bar with two different soup bays (seafood has its own, chowderheads).
ՠMaybe the best grocery-store croissants we've ever tried—crusty and flaky on the outside, all soft buttery goodness on the inside. Also, the pecan-pie cookie caused swooning.
ՠA wall of cheeses, including a savory mimolette and a brie so gooey and delicious that it changed the way we think of cheese.
ՠ365, the Whole Foods private label, which supplies everything from pasta to nuts to milk.
ՠWhole Body, the next-door spin-off of all-natural body and beauty supplies, including handmade local organic clothing from the Bellos sisters of Nashville's ASK Apparel.
Also, the answer is no: there will be no wine sales. If that rubs you raw, call your congressman and prepare to fight a lobby so firmly entrenched it makes Big Tobacco look like the Coalition for Sweet Potatoes.
I haven't tested the waters on a regular business day, and, frankly, I'm reserving judgment until I figure out how the traffic and parking work in an already overrun Green Hills. But early word is that there will be valet service, which could solve the problem. And once you're giving over your whole paycheck anyway, what's another couple bucks?
Thanks to Lannae Long of Lannae's Food and Travel for lending Bites the photo above, and check out her own in-depth account of last week's tour on her long-running blog.
Comments
After our tour of Whole Foods, I couldn't figure out what made me more jealous:
Posted 10/30/2007 at 12:15:08 PMthe gorgeous Salud cooking kitchen with its wall of windows on Green Hills...
or the fact that Whole Foods chocolate chunk cookies were better than any cookie I've ever baked at home.
The pecan pie cookies were the ones I stuffed in my pockets. Trish, the baking czar, suggested taking them home and nuking them for 10 seconds, but after one bite I couldn't wait that long.
Posted 10/30/2007 at 02:55:41 PMThe croissants were amazing—fresh and buttery even though they'd been sitting on a cooling rack for some time.
Also, how cool was it to finally meet Lannae Long? Our tour group was great: we also had The Rage's Dana Kopp Franklin, who was geeking out as much as I was. "This is like Disneyworld!" she exclaimed. Well put, except you might actually get some rest from the crowds at Disneyworld.
Posted 10/30/2007 at 02:58:49 PMmmmm...gelato...so sad I didn't get to the tours last wknd, but can't wait for it to open!
Posted 10/30/2007 at 04:39:26 PMNow if only we could get a Wegman's down here!
Who needs a Wegman's when we have Whole Foods?
Posted 10/30/2007 at 05:00:21 PMWhole Foods is simply the best.
i need a wegmans, thats who.
Posted 10/30/2007 at 05:35:44 PMi went on the tour on sunday. it was nice, but i dont expect to see any of those walls again for at least 6 months. its gonna be hell navigating through all those oblivious green hills tennis moms on their cell phones (not to mention their SUVs in the parking garage) oohing and ahing and acting like they deserve all of this shit.
i dont have a solution, except maybe to open a whole foods (or wegmans) somewhere other than green hills. sorry, but i dont foresee many positive whole foods experiences in my future.
Hey Carrington (and Mr Pink) it was so nice to meet you and have time to chat with you. I am so psyched you linked to my blog! Thank you for using my Cheesy Photo for your blog too! Yeah, valet parking for grocery shopping, I might have to draw the line there...
Posted 10/30/2007 at 09:45:57 PMValet parking always sets me into a shame spiral. My car is a rolling recycle bin, my keychain is falling apart at the seams, and more often than not I'm listening to Junie B. Jones or some other cringe-inducing children's CD when I pull up to the stand--even though there are no kids in the car. Not to mention the fact that all I ever have to give the person who gets stuck parking my crapster with no gas and a blinking Check Engine light is an empty Trident wrapper.
Posted 10/30/2007 at 10:10:09 PMThose interested in valet parking for the grocery-getter can have that experience at the Green Hills Kroger, too. For lazy shoppers on a budget!
Posted 10/31/2007 at 09:51:15 AMMr. Pink,
Posted 10/31/2007 at 10:11:42 AMThe lobby you speak of with regards to liquor sales would be Southern Baptists? Who else in their right mind would lobby in such a way that you can barely find a liquor store in Davidson, *no* liquor sales in Cheatham, and who only knows what else it is like in the rest of TN? A good lobby would have created the perfect storm that is New Jersey: Liquor, beer, and wine all in one place and they are open on Sundays. And if the concern happens to be a restaurant, they have the option of keeping the package store side open as late as they want. Oh yeah - You don't have to pump your gas in NJ either. Call it valet fill-up.
Well, you know, you have to pick your battles in life and finding a parking place for my car at WholeFoods is definitely going to be one of my battles! Just like toddling down to Frugal McDougal's to stock up is another.
Posted 10/31/2007 at 11:29:49 AMAs Auntie Mame put it...
"life's a banquet and some poor @#$%^& are starving to death!"
tomorrow
Posted 10/31/2007 at 11:53:27 AMtomorrow
it's only a dayyyyyyy
awayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy...
On my bike in the weee hours, I've scoped the WF parking situation. I believe there are about 75 spaces there. Not exactly abundant, but reasonable, if you're shopping at times other than 5 p.m. weekdays. When I'm eating at Noshville, I'll definitely take advantage of the parking to do some quick shopping.
Posted 10/31/2007 at 12:06:09 PMInteresting idea, fluffernutter.
Posted 10/31/2007 at 12:29:45 PMJoisy -- I was going to chime in with the wonderfully enabling full-service rule in the Garden State, but you beat me to it. Great minds, or lazy minds, anyway...
Posted 10/31/2007 at 12:37:35 PMOMG~There are other WEGMANS believers here? Nothing can compete with Wegmans. I am a food service professional (thirty plus years as a chef), I come from the land of Wegmans, Pittsford NY. Wegmans is a privately held company, owned by the family members, and in my opinion is one thousand times better than Whole Foods. I have been to many Whole Foods stores across the country, and just came back from Vancouver, where they are purchasing "Capers" to make it into a Whole Foods. Whole Foods is corporate, and if you like to support corporate, well, good for you. The reason I wish Wegmans would come here is because I believe in supporting small companies, that are privately owned.
Posted 10/31/2007 at 01:26:26 PMI will support Whole Foods, anything has to be better than Wild Oats.
Also, Wegman's was ranked #1 place to work in America by FORTUNE in 2005 or 6. They treat their employees right. 2nd, Joisy, you can get hootch in Cheatham County. Kingston Springs has 2 liquor stores. 3rd, if you're ever down Texas way, make it a point to visit Central Market. The one in Ft Worth is astounding. Finally, what 's the big deal about the viking stove? Is the heat hotter or better than any other kind of stove, or is it just the status symbol du jour for insecure bourgeoisie yuppies?
Posted 10/31/2007 at 01:55:14 PMbingo, taterman
Posted 10/31/2007 at 02:00:02 PMDon't hold your breath waiting for a Wegman's, which, as best I know, has no distribution hubs close enough to Nashville.
Posted 10/31/2007 at 03:30:05 PMThe Central Market in Austin is a religious experience. And the folks there seem to support a Whole Foods and a Central Market just fine.
"OMG~There are other WEGMANS believers here? I am a food service professional (thirty plus years as a chef)"
Posted 10/31/2007 at 03:34:13 PMOK, new rule. If you've got 30 years experience in ANY job, you're too old to use OMG in communication. Sorry. I am too old too.
And other thing. People, this is a grocery store. Let's ratchet back the breathless hyperbole ("brie so gooey and delicious that it changed the way we think of cheese") and get some perspective. I mean, this article sounds like Nashville is Moscow ca. 1975 where the grocery store shelves might hold 4 beets, a turnip and a tin of the people's herring. Like it was lifted from Pravda.
taterman - that's pretty damn funny and on some level you are certainly dead right. BUT. you take a gal like me and throw me into a kroger's, while i can make do - i am NOT happy about it...
Posted 10/31/2007 at 04:45:31 PMI mean, this article sounds like Nashville is Moscow ca. 1975 where the grocery store shelves might hold 4 beets, a turnip and a tin of the people's herring.
Posted 10/31/2007 at 05:04:29 PMObviously you've never been to an East Nashville Kroger.
Let's ratchet back the breathless hyperbole ("brie so gooey and delicious that it changed the way we think of cheese") and get some perspective.
Posted 10/31/2007 at 05:06:43 PMHere's my perspective: my wife, a brie fanatic who has contented herself all these years with the occasional wedge from the Kroger deli, took a bite and just about fainted.
Touche on the stove envy. My GE dual fuel laughs in the face of any $5K Five Star. (But the brie really was something special.)
Posted 10/31/2007 at 07:57:32 PM"Obviously you've never been to an East Nashville Kroger"
Posted 10/31/2007 at 08:49:05 PMOK, you have a good point. I live in Pegram so I know something about groceries devoid of tastes that would wake the living. And I am sure I will go to WF, having been raised on the Sutton Place Gourmet in DC, ruining my buds for life. And my beef with the brie description was more about it's elevation of the mold to mythic status. Stove envy? My only envy is of those of us who can cook with gas. Not available in my beautiful patch of nowhere. And I refuse to have the giant Tylenol in our yard.
somehow, through the good grace of god or sheer luck - i bought my house from pro-caterers. the stove is commercial gas - meaning illegal size gas lines for residential along with silly high btu's. it is quite the beast. and if i may so, i am in love with it...
Posted 10/31/2007 at 10:00:11 PMOne of my most embarrassing moments was at a dinner party at my boss's house (several careers ago, don't worry)where the hostess served a cheese that was, without hyperbole, unlike any other I had ever tasted. In an awkward effort to make conversation with the hostess -- a New Yorker who shipped in her cheeses -- I asked her what it was. She gave me a bless-your-heart look and explained that it was called "brie." I mean, she all but spelled it for me. I felt like a complete backwater dumbass, because it didn't taste like any brie I had ever had. But it did taste like the cheese we encountered at Whole Foods.
Posted 11/01/2007 at 11:20:01 AMAs a former caterer, I have cooked on Viking, Wolff..you name it. I have taken a pound of butter and reduced it to a tsp of foam in a commercial microwave. An experience not worth repeating. But for my own kitchen.newly renovated...Kenmore Elite gas range. Instead of the mega bucks...I stayed with the tried and true. And being a true Gemini..if I get tired of it..i can try another gas or duel fuel range for a whole lot less money and the stainless steel countertops won't have to suffer a bit.
Posted 11/01/2007 at 11:37:04 AMcarrington - ok ok ok. i'm going to try the brie over there. i'm not even a brie fanatic but how could i resist? my only fear is that there will be more than one. and i won't know which it was that you've been talking about.
Posted 11/01/2007 at 12:18:18 PMTatterman, didn't know you were the rule maker here. Have alot of time on your hands, do you?
Posted 11/01/2007 at 01:47:53 PMbtw, I started my professional career at age two, which makes me 32.
i think that OMG is still acceptable under the age of 35.
Mazel Tov!
Carrington, I guess I'll ahve to try it. Your story reminded me of a friend's new wife, she of NYC. We were all having dinner at that Thai place off Nolensville when someone mentioned a drink that contained Bailey. "You have Bailey's in the South?" she asked, somewhat shocked. I informed her that not only do we have Bailey's but in Atlanta they have one them X-ray machines.
Posted 11/01/2007 at 02:46:14 PMThat brie is so screwed by the curse of high expectations now. Talk about a build-up. I beg you not to try it.
Posted 11/01/2007 at 04:04:57 PMtoo late carrington. your ass is so on the line here. your entire credibility hanging by the proverbial thread of one bite of brie...
Posted 11/01/2007 at 04:29:46 PMI have distributed your photos to the Whole Foods staff. Under no circumstances are they to sell or otherwise offer brie to you. You will have to pry it out of the cold, dead hand of the cheesemonger, which I bet you will be unable to do once you have your hands filled with chocolate-espresso-bean cookies and fresh croissants. Oh, the carnage. (How's THAT for hyperbole?)
Posted 11/01/2007 at 09:33:10 PMYou will have to pry it out of the cold, dead hand of the cheesemonger
Posted 11/01/2007 at 10:59:58 PMOh, you and your National Roquefort Association rhetoric. Yeah, yeah, I've seen all the same bumper stickers:
WHEN GOUDA IS OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GOUDA
REGISTER COMMUNISTS, NOT CAMEMBERT
GUNS DON'T KILL PEOPLE—VELVEETA KILLS PEOPLE
THERE'S A PRICE TO PAY FOR FROMAGE
GIVE ME LIMBURGER OR GIVE ME DEATH
LIVE BRIE OR DIE
damn it carrington, not the monkey suit nor the serpico get-up will contain my ride... drats. foiled again. but i have spies...
Posted 11/02/2007 at 01:23:53 AMand pink - did you pull alla that outa thin air or what? you are my hero.
speaking of cheese and death... (ok, maybe just cheese)i may be a day or so past halloween but i saw this and wanted to share:
Posted 11/02/2007 at 01:26:12 AMCheese is philosophically interesting as a food whose qualities depend on the action of bacteria — it is, as James Joyce remarked, "the corpse of milk." Dead milk, live bacteria. A similar process of controlled spoilage is apparent in the process of hanging game, where some degree of rotting helps to make the meat tender and flavorsome — even if one no longer entirely subscribes to the nineteenth-century dictum that a hung pheasant is only ready for eating when the first maggot drops onto the larder floor. With meat and game, the bacterial action is a desideratum rather than a necessity, which it is in the case of cheese — a point grasped even in Old Testament times, as Job reveals in his interrogation of the Lord: "Hast thou not poured me out as milk, and curdled me like cheese?" The process of ripening in cheese is a little like the human acquisition of wisdom and maturity: both processes involve a recognition, or incorporation, of the fact that life is an incurable disease with a hundred percent mortality rate — a slow variety of death.
֠from The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester
Cheese in America is dead.
Posted 11/02/2007 at 10:36:36 AMIn other countries (or at least the few ones I've been in) cheese is not wrapped/cellophaned/
pasteurized/refrigerated,but sold at room temperature, with allows for the cultures to continue the process of cheesefication. And for the stinky-feet odor of some cheeses to assault your sense annd sensibility
i went
Posted 11/03/2007 at 09:50:51 AMi saw
i spent
and it was good
the hot bar is a bit too southern for me, but hey - surprise surprise...
Cheese in America is dead.
Posted 11/04/2007 at 08:40:36 PMCarrington and I were just talking about this on the walk back from the new restaurant in Union Station. She was telling me about the marketing whiz who advised Sargento's cheesemakers that the way to conquer the American market was basically to package their product in body bags—little Ziploc-sealed sarcophagi that gave no hint of decay or natural process. Worked like a charm. Now if they could just do the same for lamb.
Pink:
Posted 11/05/2007 at 11:58:19 AMI have also smell'd that accrid-sulfury stench from Lamb. If you ask the butcher to take it out of the plastic, and re-wrapped it in plain 'ole butcher's paper, by the time you get home the funk will be gone.
Until yuo break out the Ohio Players!