April 29
...serving up your daily dish.
Pigged out at Whole Food's monthly free-for-all yesterday (chorizos, Mexican wedding cake, fajitas, a salted virgin margarita, you get the picture). Funniest overheard comment -- a sophisticated boy about 12, eating Manchego cheese and telling his mom, "I've been waiting for this day to come." In related news, liquor disappears from the store soon.
The distibution license will go to the Middletown Whole Foods, which apparently has more space. In yesterday's Montclair Times, an approved transfer of Whole Food's liquor license went to Sharon A. Sevrens, who is said to be scoping out locations in Montclair for a new liquor store. We happen to know Sevrens is a sommelier. We tasted Rieslings with her at an Essex County Wine Society event and she's got quite a palate. Maybe she'll shake things up and do a wine/cheese style shop or something unique. We'll follow up.
April 29, 2005 in Food and Drink | Permalink
The funniest thing I've heard at Whole Foods (and I very rarely go there) was this grown man having a conversation with a girl who looked about 5 and asking her which type of Pate' she liked the best. He went on and on about the various styles and textures and she was giving him legitimate feedback. It just felt SO Montclair!
Posted by: butchcjg | Apr 29, 2005 2:47:28 PM
It's a shame they will lose their liquor license. It's one of the few places in Baristaville where you can find a decent variety of imports (other than Heinken, bleeeegh) and micros. Perhaps I'm wrong though. Any other beer snobs out there who know something that I don't???
Posted by: beerme | Apr 29, 2005 3:30:32 PM
Brookdale Shoprite has a fairly good beer selection. Bottle King has some variety. But, Whole Foods does have a unique selection. Bummer.
Posted by: butchcjg | Apr 29, 2005 3:33:50 PM
Magnolia's in Upper Montclair has a nice selection of imported beers but Bottle King on Bloomfield Ave (across from the former Arthur Treacher's) is great!
Posted by: Joyce Mooney | Apr 29, 2005 3:36:02 PM
My own kids chant "rice cakes, rice cakes". Whenever we go to WholeFoods.
Posted by: caazoo | Apr 29, 2005 3:39:46 PM
doh!! i was there yesterday around 7 and i didn't see any free goodies. must've missed it.
Posted by: E. | Apr 29, 2005 3:49:50 PM
And my daughter wants the gourmet chocolate chip cookies, and the organic chocolate raspberry ice cream, and the organic brownie mix. . . I try to avoid taking her there-- she would double the already exorbitant bill if she could.
Posted by: latebloomer | Apr 29, 2005 3:50:53 PM
Butch, that's a pretty funny story. Sounds more Short Hills than Montclair, though. I never thought Montclairans were the pate eating type. Though my 8 year old son has developed a fondness for sushi, particularly caviar. He likes to order a la carte.
Posted by: walleroo | Apr 29, 2005 4:00:27 PM
Mmm, my kids love sushi too! Weird, considering they're mostly the pizza/chicken fingers type.
Posted by: latebloomer | Apr 29, 2005 4:17:14 PM
On Earth DAy they had great freebies and I happened to be in there. Each gift bag included a few samples of different laundry detergents, dish soaps, snack bars, etc. We each got one, and so we're all set with dish soap for the next month!
Posted by: butchcjg | Apr 29, 2005 4:18:32 PM
Liquour licenses in NJ are provided on a town by town basis. So a Montclair license could not be transferred to a Middletown business. Sharon getting the Whole Foods license makes sense, because she is looking for space in town. But the sentence that says that the distribution license will go to Whole Foods in Middletown is not correct. They would have to find their own distribution license within Middletown.
Posted by: Ken | Apr 29, 2005 4:34:15 PM
Total Wine in West Orange has a very good selection of wine & beer...
Prospect Avenue & I-280
Phone: 973-324-0899
Posted by: waves2ya | Apr 29, 2005 4:36:19 PM
Go to Bottle King for price and a decent selection, Magnolia's for a better variety of the funkier stuff like US micro-brews.
And I once laughed at you all for saying the Whole Foods parking lot was the nexus of evil but after a recent visit I would have to agree. Seemingly normal and rational people enter the lot and instantly become raving fruitcakes.
Posted by: State Street Pete | Apr 29, 2005 4:59:41 PM
One of the things I'm grateful to Baristanet for is the contact it affords with young people who have no kids. The notion of a youth underground attending Whole Foods events to stock up on soap is a side of Montclair I wish I knew more about. I wonder if Short Hills has its version of Butch?
Posted by: walleroo | Apr 29, 2005 5:44:42 PM
I was actually at Whole Foods to buy flowers for my girlfiend....the soap was an awesome bonus!
Posted by: butchcjg | Apr 29, 2005 6:12:19 PM
Has anyone seen what Whole Foods stores can look like outside of Montclair? My daughter and I were visiting colleges and went to a Whole Foods in Evanston. The store is HUGE and awesome! Easily the size of Kings in Verona and would put anyone's lust for Wegman's to shame!
I mentioned this to one of the people in Montclair's Whole Foods and they said that Montclair was their smallest store, and that there was "no space" to expand in Montclair. Weird, huh, especially since DCH wrangled the town to get the space on Orange Road, just a stones throw from Whole Foods, for a huge parking lot for their inventory.
Cary
Posted by: carya | Apr 29, 2005 8:34:52 PM
Total Wine in West Orange, at Essex Green Plaza, has an immense wine selection with good prices and a fairly knowledgeable staff. Better than Bottle King. The beer choices seem adequate.
Posted by: JTF | Apr 29, 2005 9:10:57 PM
The Whole Foods in the new Time building at Columbus Circle is like an underground city.
Posted by: walleroo | Apr 29, 2005 9:56:25 PM
If you want to see what a big Whole Foods is like, head up to the one in Edgewater. It is about the same size as a Stop & Shop with plenty of parking, a big Whole Body section, a salad bar and ready-to-eat section, as well as a Jamba Juice and seating to enjoy what you've bought. The parking lot abuts the Hudson River right across from Riverside Church. We go there from time to time to get some things the Montclair store doesn't stock, and while up there we often walk down to the Binghampton and back for some excercise after eating all that stuff. They don't it Whole Paycheck for nothin'!
(But no, it doesnt' have a liquor license. The official explanation is that a corporation can only own two in the state... I've been to a few of them and I don't know which other store has one.)
Posted by: Chris | Apr 29, 2005 10:39:27 PM
Most of the comments above about beer are, well, silly. The simple truth is that almost any decent-sized liquor store will have a goodly selection of beers, imports, micros, etc. That's just the nature of the marketing beast these days. Oh, there's some stuff you won't find unless you go specifically to Newark, like Sagres and Globo beers from Portugal (which you really can live without). And only a few stores in Clifton, which has a certain ethnic sweep that Montclair doesn't, will have a wide selection of Polish and Russian and Czech beers (which you can also pretty much live without, the great Czech beers are on draft and not in bottles). But everybody else pretty much stocks the "beer basics." I honestly sometimes think that residents of Baristaville are surprisingly provincial in weird ways (they don't seem to know about Corrado's, for example, and someone literally asked directions to Brookdale ShopRite on this site, as if going there called for a guide and "native bearers") but trust me folks, you don't have to worry about your import or microbrew fix, most area liquor stores can readily meet your needs. And here's a tip from someone who loves beer: the best beers in the state are regularly brewed at Krogh's in Sparta. (Food and live music are also pretty fair.) Which is in the phone book if you really need directions to Sussex County, for God's sake.
Posted by: cathar | Apr 29, 2005 11:14:31 PM