Wanted: Upscale supermarket

Ann Althouse lusts for a deluxe Whole Foods supermarket like the one recently opened in Austin.

I've been known to make meals out of peanut butter -- just peanut butter -- for days, purely to avoid the experience of setting foot in a food store.

Hell yes. I can relate to .that. Since I moved to Maryland, north of Baltimore, I've been aching for an upscale supermarket. Just this afternoon I heard that Baltimore city approved a supermarket that aims to be a cross between Whole Foods and Balducci's and I immediately wanted to move just to be near it.

I live near two supermarkets and both stink. One, a Weiss, has relatively low prices but it's dingy and the produce department is depressing. Nothing at all exotic in the store--not even sushi. The other, a Giant, looks slightly better but more than a few times I've seen items on its shelves past the sell by date--last week it was bagged salad greens, another time someone had pulled the sell by date off a really dicey-looking steak. Also, the gourmet section consists of such exotica as Twinings Earl Grey tea and marmalade.

I've been lusting after Wegmans since this post by Virginia Postrel. Five hundred cheeses, prodigious pulchritudinous produce, international newspapers and 130,000 square feet of store. Plus all the regular brands you find in a supermarket.

Heaven!

And read this post, too: Wegmans fanmail