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July 14, 2005
Stew Leonard's
The drive up to the Cape last weekend was one of the longest drives in the history of long-weekend drives. It wasn't terrible driving, but it was raining and there was traffic and all told, a 4.5 hour drive turned into a 9 hour one. Each time we got going, traffic would appear on the horizon and then we'd see this for half an hour. Serves us right for not leaving the night before.
We stopped at Stew Leonard's in Norwalk, CT (Derek's old home), to alleviate the boredom a bit (we were getting a little loopy in the car). Stew's is a unique phenomenon in the food business -- it's like the Disneyword of grocery stores. There are huge displays and dancing mechanical fruit characters that sing songs at regular intervals. As you're picking out a tomato, a giant stalk of celery above you might start cheerfully bouncing and singing "We're Dole fresh vegetables, we're good for you! We're Dole fresh vegetables, we're good friends, too!" (can you tell that's gotten into my head a bit?).
The store is organized like a giant maze, so you follow one course from start to finish (there are no aisles). The displays are all farmer's market-style, with colorful signs and an abundance of food. Baked goods are made on site, and there are large windows between the store and the areas where the baking is done. As we were walking by the bread area we caught a glimpse of someone weighing out dough for loaves. Milk and other dairy is also processed on site.
As a huge fan of food, I was pretty excited the first time D took me to Stew Leonard's. It's like a farmer's market on steroids. The large majority of what they sell is fresh and they sell huge quantities of everything, so instead of seeing 5 balls of mozarella on a counter, you see about a hundred of them, with a mozarella-dedicated staffer restocking as you walk by. I usually want to buy everything and can't because we're far from home, but this time we could buy food for a weekend with friends so I went wild and got a peach-blueberry pie, blueberries, mozarella, tomatoes, basil, and a watermelon. We also stopped for a lobster roll at the outdoor snack bar.
Derek has been going to Stew Leonard's since he was born. I've even seen home movies of him (at age 6 or so) and his brother feeding the goats in the petting zoo out front. He also can't leave the place without getting an ice cream cone.
Posted by csageday at July 14, 2005 07:30 PM