Once a Reston resident

Of shorter days and supermarkets

I recently heard El Supermarcado on North Shore might be closing.  I hated to see the Giant leave before it.  The tendency to have larger and larger grocery stores just makes life more difficult as far as I am concerned.  I know there are plenty of grocery stores in the Reston area but often parking and traffic make them difficult to access.

As I write about Reston from my perspective of the North Carolina coast, I try to compare shopping in Reston to the way we treat our grocery stores during the summer tourist season. 

We try to make the bulk of our purchases from Monday until Thursday.  With absentee owners streaming in on Fridays, and tourists checking into their homes on Saturday and Sunday, the grocery stores look like locusts have been in them on those days.

We are lucky because of the summer population surge, we have four large supermarkets, two Food Lions, one Lowes, and a Piggy Wiggly all within about five miles.  Even in the worst traffic you could be at any of them in about ten minutes which should tell you that our traffic never gets very bad.

We also just got a new Harris Teeter in Morehead City about twenty minutes away. In that same area there is also a Walmart grocery store there.  With the tourists gone our grocery stores are uncrowded almost all of the time.  In fact some of us are worried that the new Harris Teeter might not be getting enough business to hang around.

It is always a pleasure to have the great variety of vegetables and fruits that larger stores like Harris Teeter bring.  When a grocery store leaves, there is some sense of loss.  I know the Ukrop's Store in Roanoke, Va is closing this October.  Roanoke is a Kroger town with only a few Food Lions and on Fresh Market to help the few independents out.  But some of us will Ukrop's.  We bought most of our Thanksgiving dinner there last year.

I do not think Northern Virginia has a problem with grocery store variety with places like Wegman's in the background, but I do know that quick local access is a problem.  Going to the grocery and being back home in fifteen minutes is probably a bigger challenge than it is here on the Carolina coast or in Roanoke where you are never very far from a Kroger.

As the days get shorter, my memories turn to the days when we lived in Canada.  Just getting to a grocery store often meant a thirty minute drive in good weather.  It was typical to only go to the store once a week. In winter snow storms, going to the grocery store just did not happen.  When we first lived in Canada in the early seventies there were no large supermarkets in the rural part of Nova Scotia. Fruit and fresh vegetables were a challenge in the winter.  Even when we moved to Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1984, grocery stores closed at 6 PM on Saturday and were closed all day on Sunday.

This morning I read a story in the Toronto Star about the challenge of buying groceries in Canada's far north.  After reading about milk costing almost nine dollars per half gallon, I guess I am not going to worry too much about losing a grocery store here or there.  I think we are covered pretty well, though I will miss the Ukrop's bakery on my trips to Roanoke.

I never became a El Supermercado shopper so if in truth it is disappearing, it will happen without me ever having visited.

It is a beautiful day on the coast of North Carolina so I am going to take my own advice "Carpe Beach Diem."

Not Exactly the Reston Parkway Harris Tweeter

There is little doubt that the Reston area is a shopping mecca. Yet there are advantages to having small local stores.

The market pictured to the left is the Coastal Community Market which sells organic produce and foods in Beaufort, NC.

It is  the first of its kind in Carteret County.

It also sells one of my favorite foods, Marmite.  There is something special about going into a place where the choices are limited, but the food is as local as possible.

You can actually have a conversation at the cash register instead of just anonymously sliding your card through the card machine.

In my case the owner was pleased to find that I liked Marmite since most area people know nothing about it.

I have always been a sucker for small community run grocery stores.  First there was Beaver Fruit Cooperative in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia.  Then there was an organic foods shop in Fredericton, NB.

After we moved from Columbia, MD, we were excited to find the Roanoke Natural Foods Coop.

In Reston, I loved to shop at Whole Foods where I could get Icelandic Salmon.  I often visited Trader Joes just for a change of pace.

I wonder if higher energy costs and continuing food safety problems will eventually create a renaissance in local food?

Time will tell.

One thing missing in Reston

I know Reston has Pizzeria Uno Chicago Bar & Grill, but it just isn't the same as a little pizza place where the owner makes the pizza.

In Roanoke when our two Reston-residing kids visit us, we often go to Rico's at Oak Grove Plaza. They complain about only being able to get chain restaurant pizza in Reston so Ricco's is a real treat for them in spite of there being no fancy dining room filled with chrome and glass.

Here on the Carolina coast, we have just been blessed with a new owner run pizza spot, Trattoria.

Recently we were out chasing sunsets and found that our new pizza spot near Swansboro, NC was having a trial run before their grand opening.

It only took about sixty seconds after they placed the warm bread and garlic infused olive oil on the table for us to decide that we had found a piece of pizza heaven.  The pizza we had later only confirmed our first impressions.

I don't know what it is about these small pizza places, but when they are good there is no comparison to one of the chain run places.

We used to get a wonderful spinach pizza from Mountain View Italian Pizza in Ironto, Va. which is basically in the middle of nowhere.  It was so good, I programmed their number into my phone and would call whenever we were in the neighborhood.  The last time we called it sounded like they might have closed for good, but I'm sure we will give it another try.

Maybe a place like Reston just isn't structured right for a small pizza place.  After all, getting a business up and going in Reston isn't exactly something for anyone other than those with very deep pockets.

These small pizza places are the homes of people who love to cook and whose pizzas show that dedication to cooking. 

Maybe there is a great Reston pizza place that I just don't know about yet.  I have enjoyed some wonderful luncheon pizza at El Manantial Restaurant on North Shore, but they are a little upscale to considered a pizza place.

Land of many grocery stores

When I worked in Reston one of my favorite grocery stores was Whole Foods at 11660 Plaza America Dr. in Reston.

I even wrote a post, "Food for the empire," about some Salmon I got there in 2005.  We went on to develop a taste for the Icelandic Salmon that Whole Foods would often have.

Being from one of the Provinces, Southwest Virginia, I was always amazed at the variety of grocery stores.  I think I tried them all over the years from the Gourmet Giant in McLean to Trader Joe's.

I even worked up in the Reston area long enough to enjoy a trip or two to Wegman's.

People have their favorite grocery stores and different reasons as to why they are favorites.  My son does not like the small Giant on North Shore because they don't have an automated checkout.  He often goes to the Harris-Teeter over on Reston Parkway just for that reason.

My wife really likes the small Kroger in our neighborhood in Roanoke, Va.  I like the Lowe's Foods in Cape Carteret, NC where we have a second home.

The picture at the beginning of the post is from the new Ukrop's that has just opened in Roanoke. 

For years I hauled specialty foods back to Roanoke in cooler.

Roanoke was the wasteland of grocery stores.  Harris Teeter abandoned us and even Winn Dixie left. 

The battle in Roanoke was between Kroger and Food Lion.  I could not figure out how Reston could have every grocery store under the sun, and the only variety we had in Roanoke was visiting a Kroger with a different address.

I should say that Roanoke always has had three good alternatives but they have remained small and in one case somewhat seasonal.

Tinnell's which I wrote about in Rotisserie Chicken My Way is a great small grocery store with some high quality meats. 

The Roanoke Natural Foods Coop and The Roanoke Farmer's Market are the two others which I have mentioned in numerous posts including A great fall harvest at the farmers market and more recently Changes at the Roanoke Farmers' Market.

Things started to change in Roanoke in the fall of 2005.  Fresh Market showed up in town.  They were overwhelmed for weeks.  I think they have started a small trend. 

Ukrop's opened this summer, and there are rumors of another gourmet grocery store coming to town.  I am not holding my breath for Trader Joe's but I wouldn't be surprised as it came high in a survey of what Roanoke people want.

I still love Whole Foods and am hoping to stop by one of the Raleigh ones on the way back to the beach.

We went shopping at Ukrop's yesterday, but we did not buy anything.  Later in the evening we went to the Roanoke Natural Food Coop for some Marmite which I wrote about in my post, The perfect Saturday morning breakfast, and why we do it.

I am amazed at the tremendous variety of prepared foods that are now available at some very expensive prices.  I saw pimento cheese for sale at Ukrop's for over $9 per pound.  It did not look nearly as good as the pimento cheese recipe that I have shared on the web.

My predictions are that it won't be long before no one knows how to really cook which is a shame since most of the grocery store prepared food won't hold a candle to the great food prepared at home.

Great ingredients make great foods.   The grocery stores have the ingredients sometime even tomatoes like the ones we find in North Carolina.  Paying them to make food that isn't as good as you can make on your own doesn't make sense to me.

I have yet to ever have a pot roast as good as the ones done by my wife Glenda.  Her clam chowder would put any imitation from a grocery store to shame.  Then there is the wonderful fried chicken that my mother was famous for cooking. It required a first and second step but the results were worth it.  No grocery store chicken will ever compete with that.

Then there are foods like lightly fried flounder that would be terrible warmed up.

With all this food talk, I have gotten hungry.  It is time to find some lunch.

That time of the year for local veggies

My body clock tells me it is fresh produce time of the year.  My Reston based daughter has been visiting the Reston Farmer's market.

I have never had the pleasure of seeing the Reston Market, but I am sure the veggies and fruit are delicious.

This morning we visited the Roanoke Farmers' Market, which is open 363 days each year.

We had not been in a while, but the changes were minimal.  The awning are now blue and white instead of yellow and white.

One of my favorite vendors, Garden Mountain Farm, that we have enjoyed in many previous visits wasn't there.

Fortunately there was another vendor with sausages that I can throw on the grill.

It's a little early for home grown tomatoes in Roanoke, but we are getting great tomatoes down on the NC Carolina coast.

I put up on the web some pictures of our Roanoke Farmers' Market visit.  I would love to see some pictures of the Reston Market.