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.
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!
My sons 5 and I can’t even get him to eat mashed potatoes!
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???
Brookdale Shoprite has a fairly good beer selection. Bottle King has some variety. But, Whole Foods does have a unique selection. Bummer.
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!
My own kids chant “rice cakes, rice cakes”. Whenever we go to WholeFoods.
doh!! i was there yesterday around 7 and i didn’t see any free goodies. must’ve missed it.
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.
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.
Mmm, my kids love sushi too! Weird, considering they’re mostly the pizza/chicken fingers type.
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!
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.
Total Wine in West Orange has a very good selection of wine & beer…
Prospect Avenue & I-280
Phone: 973-324-0899
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.
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?
I was actually at Whole Foods to buy flowers for my girlfiend….the soap was an awesome bonus!
Okay, maybe not an underground.
You don’t really mean girlFIEND, do ya, CJ?
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
The WHole Foods at Union Square in NYC is HUGE!!!
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.
The Whole Foods in the new Time building at Columbus Circle is like an underground city.
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.)
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.
Cathar, you are just one amazing guy. A literary genius, and a man of the people, all in one–a pillar of Baristaville.
Cathar,
I am not in agreement that adequate beer can be found in New Jersey. Where’s the Adnams Broadside? The Black Sheep? The White Horse? After living in England, I will never be able to do with out a good, thick, tasty bitter. And my brilliant money-making idea is to import British beer, chocolate, and other sweets.
We don’t really have “locals,” here, Marshall. But we have lots of British beer. You can even buy Theakston’s Old Peculier and Thomas Hardy here. I’ve even seen “Old Fart” beer around, which I believe is brewed in Newcastle. And many of our domestic beers are, no matter if this is heresy, as good if not better than Britbeers.
Well, it’s true that I have no real experience with the domestic “microbrews” (though I don’t really know what that term technically means). However, I for one with miss my pint of Broadside.
What is nice about having the ability to buy good beer and wine at a grocery store is the CONVENIENCE, cathar.
Sure you can go to a liquor store, but it’s one more stop.
When I moved here from West Coast years ago, I went grocery shopping and searched in van for the booze. When I asked the clerk where the liquor aisle was, she looked at me like I was a nutcase.
I like being able to buy a good bottle of wine with my pate, thank you very much.
(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…)
That was me…sorry I seem provincial to you. I guess not all of us are as wordly as you cathar.
gee, cathar…thanks for stepping in and just showing how silly the rest of us are. we forgot that you know it ALL! thanks again for dismissing everyone.
and, i guess debbie should just start posting “see the phone book” rather than putting directions. and, who DARE ask a neighbor for friendly directions to place. use the phone book people! who DARE ask for a recommendation! who DARE want anything! we are all imbeciles!
[When I moved here from West Coast years ago, I went grocery shopping and searched in van for the booze. When I asked the clerk where the liquor aisle was, she looked at me like I was a nutcase.]
When i found the A&P in Little Falls (Off of Rt 46), I nearly FLIPPED OUT that they had both beer, wine and hard liquor. I had never seen that before!!
I was surprised when I saw wine in Whole Foods.
I grew up in Kansas. Some grocery stores sold beer, but only the big sucky namebrands (bud and coors) and 1/2 the alcohol content of that in the liquor store. Hardly anyone buys it for that reason.
A very, very few supermarkets have beer and wine and/or liquor licenses (it’s a relic of an earlier time, from when the legal age was 21 BEFORE it was lowered here to 18 and then raised again). Kings in Millburn is one example. As for prices, however, everyone in the biz has always maintained that you’ll usually do better at liquor stores with big volume. Whether or no, liquor licenses are limited by population these days, so cherish those markets that have them. In the right towns, a liquor license for sale is an extremely generous retirement fund right there.
cathar – you’re always preaching here as if everyone was born yesterday. you ramble on about the obvious. as if we dont know these things.
No, butch, truth is, I don’t think you know very much at all.
Why are you guys so nasty to each other. You’re two of my favorite people in Baristaville. When you snipe at each other, I feel a pain in my heart.
Okay, I’m getting a little silly here. But the fundamental sentiment is genuine.
Before you go and get all Solomon Burke-ish on us, walleroo, I will result to the time-honored schoolyard explanation, that “She started it first.” I, however, am obviously much, much better at “it.”
Better? That depends I suppose on who’s doing the judging. You certainly have a better condescending sneer. Butch, though, might attract more active minded followers. At any rate, I wish I could watch (from behind bulletproof glass) the two of you at the May 9 party.
Yes, butch will attract some liberal rabble to her side. I understand that. But verbally she’s still playing Class C ball, and I probably won’t respond any longer to her on this site. Why bother throwing my arm out for nothing, so to speak?
Oh, that’s too bad. We wouldn’t want you getting a bum elbow. Though one of the most attractive things about this site is the leveling effect it has, and the weird sparks that fly when disparate types take to doing what we loosely call debating. Besides, Cathar, I would think it’d be a challenge. Aren’t writers out to change the world? To save the damned? Isn’t it not only about finding a readership, but also creating one?
It’s tough enough saving myself, walleroo, the hell (and to it) with the damned. As Joel McCrea tells Randolph Scott in “Ride The High Country,” “All I want to do is enter my house justified.”
I don’t know much about your personal life, Cathar, but I see you living by yourself, with piles of books everywhere, sitting up until 5 am watching old movies. I must say in some ways I’m envious of the life I’ve imagined for you.
And you’ve imagined something quite different than reality. (Right on the books, though.) Would that there were an all-night country music or hard blues radio station around. (Well, there is, for both, but it’s on the digital TV which isn’t the same as the radio dial with those commercials for evangelists and hair-straightening creams I fell in love with while on “night phone” duty in the Army.) But on weekdays I only get so far as Leno’s monologue as a rule.
[But verbally she’s still playing Class C ball, and I probably won’t respond any longer to her on this site. Why bother throwing my arm out for nothing, so to speak?]
i see you’ve stuck to that real well!
i think cathar has a crush on me…he just can’t resist me! why am i so irresistable to you, baby?
and, you definitely started it first!
and, quite frankly, i dont WANT to be good at “it”. i prefer that you hush, but since you wont…well, i have to dish it back!
[No, butch, truth is, I don’t think you know very much at all.]
ps – can you come up with anything new? seriously, that routine has worn old. we all know your schtick – try to insult the intelligence. (which, again, is hilarious and just shows your own insecurities…)
surely you’re so clever you can come up with some new line of insults, no? release that product, brother!