to Whole Foods, or not to Whole Foods?

But before I get to that press­ing dilem­ma, I must tell you we had an incred­i­ble lunch at E & O yes­ter­day, which I had vis­it­ed ear­li­er this year with my New York friend Julia, in Not­ting Hill. Because I like doing the same things over and over, I did order sev­er­al of the same things I had had in the win­ter­time, so that John could taste what I had rav­ing and rem­i­nisc­ing about ever since. Divine­ly light soft-shell crab tem­pu­ra (and this time I found out the dip­ping sauce was vine­gar-based, with a pars­ley edge to it), beef san choi bau, with its mys­te­ri­ous spicy sauce, and tan­ta­liz­ing bits of mush­room and ten­der beef. In our new rel­a­tive­ly carb-light diet (must I keep these ten pounds I don’t want?), we ordered fried-rice to share and in the end left most of it behind, but it was a nice lit­tle bed for what we both agreed was the best dish of the day: a lit­tle side order of some­thing called tau miu. I’ve done a bit of research, and it seems to be a snow-pea leaf. Tiny, ten­der, a lit­tle bit­ter. I must ask my Hong Kong friend Amy where I can get them here. Just a lit­tle wilt­ed pile of leaves in soy and gar­lic. Sublime.

We walked off lunch by head­ing to what we thought was going to be our… new house. Alas, in less than the time it took me to come here to blog about it, it’s sold to some­one else. We are in a bit of a state. We had gone so far as to see an archi­tect, imag­ine where the fur­ni­ture would go, plan how to stop up the fence holes so the kit­ties could­n’t escape the gar­den, and… some­one else bought it. If you can believe this, the cur­rent own­er is the for­mer Nan­ny to the Roy­al Fam­i­ly, and appar­ent­ly the oth­er buy­ers are Lord and Lady Some­thing Or Oth­er, so you can imag­ine how pleased the sell­er was to sell to some of her own, as opposed to nasty Amer­i­cans like us. We are a bit heart­bro­ken, in the way you are about some­thing that real­ly isn’t that impor­tant, and yet it is. Where are we going to live?

Then it was off, for me, to the Event of the Day (even more thrilling than pos­si­bly buy­ing a house). It was the Grand Open­ing of the Whole Foods in Kens­ing­ton High Street, in the for­mer Bark­ers build­ing (a mas­ter­piece of art deco design). Now, mind you, not every­one in Lon­don is thrilled by the event. I ran into seri­ous oppo­si­tion at school pick­up from my friend Diana, who is pas­sion­ate about two things: organ­ic food, and small busi­ness­es. She was not at all keen on the idea of an enor­mous Amer­i­can super­mar­ket, how­ev­er organ­ic it is, tak­ing over 80,000 square feet in South Kens­ing­ton. And it’s true, Whole Foods did buy out a UK-owned com­pa­ny called Fresh & Wild in 2004 and just in the last two months closed down its enor­mous­ly pop­u­lar branch in West­bourne Grove. My friend Sarah, lat­er in the day, con­curred with Diana’s skep­ti­cism. “They can’t just put all the oth­er organ­ic food shops out of busi­ness,” she object­ed. “Well, they can if they buy them out,” I said rea­son­ably. “The key word being ‘buy.’ After all, they did­n’t just close Fresh & Wild, they bought them out. Fresh & Wild did­n’t have to let them.”

Now, is that true? Can a small out­fit real­ly resist an acqui­si­tion? When does an acqui­si­tion become a takeover, sure­ly two dif­fer­ent things? Yes, John explains, Fresh & Wild was a pri­vate­ly held com­pa­ny and the own­ers sold up. Voluntarily.

I have to think more about that. John likes to prick both Diana’s and Sarah’s right­eous bub­bles when he can, and also being the Com­pleat Cap­i­tal­ist, he feels that in the end, stores like Whole Foods are doing what Diana and Sarah would like: mak­ing buy­ing and eat­ing organ­ic eas­i­er and more afford­able for the mass­es. Well, ish. The prices while not exor­bi­tant were not on a par with Tesco, cer­tain­ly (and we all know I’ve racked my con­science about THAT store). It’s a dilem­ma, this food-buy­ing situation.

Well, in the end I thumbed my nose at all nay-say­ing, wet-blan­ket killjoys, even if some of them are my clos­est friends, and off I went. Mind you, Sarah had a shop­ping request from the evil, wicked store: an obscure Roman­ian hon­ey that I was kind enough to for­give her judg­ing me as super­fi­cial and buy for her. I am just that good a friend.

And dear read­ers, it was a glo­ri­ous expe­ri­ence. I did­n’t get through even a third of the place and I spent over an hour there. Mas­sive! Words can­not con­vey. Three storeys of near­ly 30,000 square feet EACH. I had to get Sarah’s hon­ey, and toma­toes for Becky, so I head­ed down­stairs to the gro­ceries and pro­duce (and every­thing else under the sun, can’t imag­ine what occu­pies the two floors I did­n’t get to! Now, all sorts of edi­to­ri­als in Lon­don are whinge­ing about the prob­a­ble waste involved in the per­ish­ables, since one can hard­ly imag­ine they can sell it all (although with 30 tills and every­one of them occu­pied at every moment per­haps they can). Whole Foods them­selves say they cook the things that don’t sell at the end of what­ev­er peri­od, and that’s their pre­pared foods. Fair enough, I believe them. But in gen­er­al I think the news­pa­pers and oth­er objec­tors are object­ing to the undoubt­ed Amer­i­can­ness of the entire project. It’s unabashed­ly enor­mous, filled to the brim with more choic­es than you can ever imag­ine, and every­one on the staff is smil­ing, opti­mistic, very can-do. Now, as anti-Amer­i­can as I can some­times be, I can’t fault those qual­i­ties. I guess it is sil­ly to imag­ine that one needs 47 types of mus­tard to choose from. It is very self-indul­gent. I can see that.

But here’s the flip side. Isn’t it nice to give 47 dif­fer­ent mus­tard-pur­vey­ing con­cerns a chance to suc­ceed? And while all the edi­to­r­i­al writ­ers are mad­ly pok­ing fun at the notion that cheese can need a room of its own to age in, isn’t it nice that there are peo­ple in this world still car­ing enough to age their cheeses? I like the idea that lots of farm­ers are find­ing mar­kets for the heir­loom vari­eties of toma­toes that so many nay-say­ers are mock­ing. Of course it’s elit­ist. Not every­one can afford to get to South Kens­ing­ton, pay for organ­ic lamb and the organ­ic rose­mary to put on it. But as long as there are peo­ple who can, I can’t com­plain about a com­pa­ny decid­ing to sup­ply them with all these choic­es. Let me tell you some of the things I came away with.

Most mem­o­rable, I think, was the fil­let of beef. Not any spe­cial kind, spe­cial­ly aged or com­ing from Japan or any­thing like that. Just nice Eng­lish fil­let, 27 pounds a kilo which I think is fair game, albeit a spe­cial pur­chase. I went all gourmet and rolled it in a mix­ture of Turk­ish Alep­po pep­per (which I already had from the box of Pen­zeys spices I told you about once before, from my dar­ling broth­er in law Joel), and some oth­er yum­my bits.

Roast Fil­let of Beef With Herbs and Spices
(serves 4 hun­gry peo­ple easily)

1 kilo beef fil­let, rolled and tied
1 tbsp each: Alep­po pep­per (it’s very mild but flavourful)
1 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp lemon pepper
1 tbsp sea salt (Mal­don is and always will be the best)
lots of fresh­ly ground black pepper
2 tbsps veg­etable oil (not olive, it smokes too easily)

Rinse your fil­let to make sure it can pick up the herb mix­ture, which you’ve mixed togeth­er and placed on a cook­ie sheet. Roll the fil­let all over, help­ing the bits adhere if they don’t go on their own, mak­ing sure the coat­ing is even. Heat the oil in a large skil­let until near­ly smok­ing and sear the fil­let all over, hold­ing it with tongs (don’t pierce it with a fork!) and turn­ing it over till the whole thing is nice­ly browned. Then place in a bak­ing dish and roast at around 350–375 degrees for about 35 min­utes for rare, 45 for medi­um. Don’t even think about cook­ing it any longer than that.

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Absolute per­fec­tion. So ten­der and tasty.

Then I’m look­ing here at a tin of “sus­tain­ably-fished tuna fil­lets in organ­ic sun­flower oil,” from a love­ly com­pa­ny called Fish 4 Ever, and dis­trib­uted by anoth­er love­ly com­pa­ny called Organ­i­co Real­foods, in Read­ing. Now don’t you think that tuna will just taste bet­ter, when you know that no sea mam­mals were caught in its eco-friend­ly “purse sein­er net”? And it did taste better.

A love­ly Eng­lish lady in the pre­pared foods aisle laughed with me over the jars of “authen­tic smooth French mus­tard” we were buy­ing, from a very Eng­lish com­pa­ny called Stokes. Nor­mal­ly I do buy real French mus­tard, but I fell for the very aus­tere and pret­ty label. Embar­rass­ing, I know. And it made mar­velous vinai­grette. Also quite remark­able for my vinai­grette was the not-expen­sive bot­tle of bal­sam­ic vine­gar from Seg­giano that I could­n’t resist, hav­ing sam­pled it in the aisle with a bit of bread­stick. Rich, dark, sweet and puck­ery, perfect.

Well, I have to come down on the side of lik­ing Whole Foods. They con­sis­tent­ly make For­tune Mag­a­zine’s list of best com­pa­nies to work for. I will go back and see the bits I did­n’t see, like the cafe upstairs with deck chair designs by British artists, and what­ev­er else is up there. But chances are you’ll still find me at Bland­ford Fruit Stores on the way home from school, where there’s always a com­plete­ly bark­ing mad polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion going on among the staff. And I won’t neglect any of my farm­ers’ mar­kets on Sun­day, and the halal butch­er in Por­to­bel­lo Road, and if John lets me, the Fro­magerie in Mox­on Street for some divine Dod­ding­ton cheese (pricey but love­ly). And frankly, I’ll nev­er get tired of Sel­f­ridges Food Hall. Vari­ety, it’s the spice of… well, you know!