Whole Foods

Whole Foods Market
5022 Poplar Ave
685-2293

On Friday, Warren and I took the monkeys (Satchel, 6, and Jiro, 4) to see Coraline in 3-D at the Paradiso. We bought our tickets about an hour early, worried it would be sold out. In the meantime, we walked over to Whole Foods to grab some dinner.

If I'm within a mile of Whole Foods, I usually have to stop and get some sushi to go. I'm completely hooked on the spicy tunacado roll. It's just tuna and avocado, but it's big, and it tastes really yummy. The monkeys have been to Whole Foods enough to know that they have really good pizza, free cheese samples, and Izze. So going in, three out of the four of us pretty much knew what we were going to get, which was good, because we had limited time. (We wanted front row seats!)

I haven't figured out why, but they stopped putting Izzes in the cooler for some reason (WHY??), so our only snafu was finding a drink. Jiro settled on a can of natural root beer and I'm partial to the $3 acai berry/blueberry juice they sell. (Satchel forgot to get a drink, but I didn't realize it until later.) Satch ordered a slice of pepperoni (they have HUGE slices, with equally HUGE yet super thin and not too greasy pepperonis) and Jiro ordered a slice of cheese. They pack the slices in triangle-shaped cardboard boxes (is that an oxymoron?) which I think are just precious, and make the pizza really easy to transport. I entrusted each monkey with their pizza and headed towards the sushi cabinet. I grabbed my roll and Jiro pointed to an avocado roll and said, "I want sushi too." I'm not going to deny my boy sushi, so I grabbed a box for him.

Our dinner in hand, we went in search of Warren, who was wondering back and forth. "Did you decide?" I asked. "I'm thinking about getting a rotisserie chicken," he said. "A whole chicken?" I clarified. "It's actually cheaper than getting a sandwich," he said pointing to some giant sub sandwiches. "Ok, get it," I said.

Let me just pause to say that Whole Foods has a really nice salad bar and hot food bar with all kinds of good stuff to eat. It's fairly common to see people with paper plates (made from recycled paper) full of "normal" meals. Team Oster clearly does not think in meat and threes.

When I reviewed Wild Oats, which was formerly in this same space, I was all ranty about the plastic plastic everywhere. I'm happy to report that most of the plastic is gone. The salad bar containers and nearly everything in the deli is recycled paper or cardboard (which is technically recycled paper). The only plastic remnants are, unfortunately, in the sushi section. I can see why cardboard wouldn't work here, but I wish there was an alternative to non-recyclable plastic. Oh, I know! How about a plastic container that is actually recyclable? (i.e. #1 or #2)

Ok, enough of that...

Chicken in one hand, jalapeno cornbread and an energy drink in the other, Warren joined us in the checkout lane. Our total was $33 (which included a .10 discount for refusing bags). This is less than we would spend in a regular restaurant, a little more than what we'd spend on fast food. After paying, I sent each monkey to the table with his stash of food. Satchel tore into his pizza and soon had his face covered in their yummy tomato sauce. Jiro popped open his root beer and downed half of it before instructing me to remove the green things (a.k.a. avocados) from his sushi. Once that was accomplished, I went in search of a knife for Warren. "Do you want a fork too?" I asked. He mumbled something which I took for a no. Upon my return he of course said, "Where's my fork?"

By this time, Satchel realized that he forgot to get a drink. After tasting everyone else's drink, he decided they were all too gross to share. Frankly, I was tired of running around, so I gave him $2 and said, "Go pick out your own drink." Then I instructed him to pay at the register about 5 feet from us. Surprisingly, the idea of venturing alone to the drink cooler was not too scary, and off he went. Two seconds later he was back pleading for me to go through the check out line with him. Begrudgingly, I obliged, but made him do most of the work, so that next time I could stay seated. (FYI Satchel refused a bag for his .59 soda and received a .10 discount.)

The rest of the meal was uneventful save for the split second that Warren almost popped a dollop of wasabi in his mouth thinking it was one of Jiro's rejected green things.