Village Market

The summer is just not as conducive to visiting corner stores with Victor as the school year. I rarely have him alone since Vida doesn’t have many afternoon activities. But on Thursday Vida had a date with B and the cell phone store—after a little altercation between her phone and a playing card. I picked Vic up from Muffinville and we went east on California to 7th Avenue and parked in front of Village Market. It’s not strictly a corner store, more like a neighborhood natural food grocery. I was happy to go to a place where it was possible to actually buy something for dinner. Of course I’ve been to Village Market before. It’s hard to resist its eye-catching displays of flowers in the front and its general charm. They are also a café with a steady clientele sitting at small tables in the window during the day.

With old wooden crates and rustic furniture serving as display fixtures Village Market looks like a high-end grocery. But if you have any grocery merchandising experience at all the store is very perplexing. They do a credible job of lending sophistication to their wine and chocolate. The organic produce is of good but not excellent quality and the displays are visually perfunctory. The grocery is another story with strange gourmet items mixed in with standard natural food brands haphazardly organized. They sell, brew and have a large display of Blue Bottle coffee, which, out in Richmond, has to be a boon to neighborhood coffee aficionados.

With no dinner plans in the works I was happy to see my favorite kind of russet potatoes. Although grown by Cal Organics, one of the largest industrial organic operations in the country, this particular variety of russets when baked has the perfect texture and sweetness and the best tasting skin of any other potato I’ve eaten. Picking up a bunch of broccoli I planned replicate a meal that I used to eat constantly before I had kids to feed, baked potatoes with sour cream and cheese with steamed broccoli. I got a white sweet potato for Victor. I asked Victor what he wanted for a snack and he tried to pull a bag of baby carrots out of a cull box. I redirected him to the fresher produce and he picked out a large carrot. Victor was impatient to eat his carrot so I quickly looked around and chose a 22 oz beer called “Bridge Burner” from Milwaukee and some baked salt and vinegar potato chips. Twenty-five bucks later, not our usual corner store expenditure, we headed home for dinner.

Vic’s Snack—carrot Vida’s Snack—Baked Salt and Vinegar Potato Chips—Beer of the Day—22 oz Bridge Burner