Whole Foods
The new Whole Foods Ultra Shopopolis opened a week ago today, so we thought it was about time we stopped in and saw what all the hubub was about. We knew 80,000 square feet sounded big, but we weren't sure just how big big was. And how many barrels of organic yeast milk, stacked on end, would it take to fill the space? And if you didn't have that many, could live, free range chickens be used instead?
The new Whole Foods, in case you are blind and deaf and/or haven't driven by the giant drilling-to-the-center-of-the-earth pit construction site sometime in the last two years, is located on the corner of Lamar and 6th street. Our experience started with a descent out of the beautiful Austin afternoon into a stygian nightmare of underground parking. Level 1: full. Level 2: full. Level 3: one tiny parking spot at the edge of the known universe in between two concrete pillars leaving a space just wide enough to park but not get out of a car. We swear, we smelled fire and brimstone as we walked to the glassed in escalator area, and a sound that may have been the cackling of a million demons, licking their lips in preparation to devour the souls of the consumers above them committing gluttony, envy, pride, and all of the other less interesting but no less damning sins.
Little did we know.
The new Whole Foods is a grocery store, a beer and wine store, a cheese store, a bakery, a fresh nut roaster, a butcher, and a seller of fine organic cotton blankets, sheets, curtains, and bath robes. There is a makeup counter. There are smiling Whole Foods employees at every corner, ready to tell you about they age their own cheeses, and cure their own salt monkeys.
In the produce section, there is a large platform with a half dozen varieties of mushrooms piled on top of it. Piled on top of the mushrooms is a log with mushrooms growing out of it. This is freshness taken to a level of wild excess. Austinist doesn't know if we will ever need to watch the fungus we are about to eat first devour a rotting log to be convinced of its quality.
This grocery store -- yes, it is still a grocery store at its core -- is very good at what it does. From the moment you enter the escalators in park sub-level 26, you are greeted with signs that tell you how you're supposed to be feeling. "Love where you shop!" say signs. "Safety! Wellness! Flavor!" These are things that we already know are associated with eating good food, but the fine people at Whole Foods just want to make sure that we never, ever forget how wonderful our experience at their store was.
Is it really a good idea to love where you shop? Is love an emotion that should really be aimed at a grocery store?
Mark our words, Austin: this is a sign of things to come. Austin is coming out of its adolescence into full cityhood, and in real cities, we have stores like this one that feel strange and foreign and artificial. Stores like this are the future - millions of options available to you, and a personal shopping coach ready to help you understand why you need most of them, now, now, now.
As we were checking out with our tofu steaks and sesame-enfused sweet potatoes, a women in the line next to us piped up.
"I don't like this place," she said, as she placed the last item of her shopping cart on the checkout counter. "So big! So crowded! This isn't Austin at all!"
"It's very LA," we said.
"Exactly!" she said. "I want the old Whole Foods! I want the old Austin!"
The woman then took her bags over to the "shopping valet," dropped them off, and trotted happily down the escalator to her car, where someone met her with her bags of groceries, so that she could avoid the terrible burdon of pushing a cart down a ramp.
How very LA.
Austinist doesn't particularly like shopping at the new Whole Foods, but we have to admit that it feels nice to have it in our neighborhood. We feel a little bit more cosmopolitan now, even if it means having a little bit of West Hollywood in our backyard. We won't be using the shopping valet anytime soon, but we're willing to relax a bit and let our city grow up around us with high hopes that all of these changes will be for the better.
