Bowling for Produce
My local market has an unusual name: The Berkeley Bowl. It is named such because the storefront it once occupied was previously a bowling alley that sported that moniker. Presumably to save on the cost of a new sign, the market kept the name. I guess the name didn’t deter folks, because it became so popular that a few years ago they moved to a new, larger location; they kept the name.
Today I was chatting with one-time maguffin, and now Real-Life-Speed-Scrabble-Pal, Yale, and she told me that Berkeley Bowl has the largest produce section on the West Coast. That did not surprise me, as I have always thought that their produce section alone is the size of an average Safeway/ Ralph’s/ Piggly Wiggly/ Alpha Beta store. When I find myself away from home, be it in some Podunk town or a major city like New York or Los Angeles, and I am cooking, I feel limited by the lack of freshness and variety in the ingredients available to me. I always ask the people I’m visiting to direct me to the best markets, and am always sorely disappointed.
I seemed to have more of a point to this when I started typing this entry. Oh, I remember– because they have such a vast amount of produce for sale, I, unlike said produce, am spoiled. They have just about every style and variety of fruit and vegetable known to man in there. I have sometimes encountered recipes that call for some very obscure and esoteric ingredients, and when it comes to fruits or vegetables I’ve always been able to find what I need at the Berkeley Bowl. You name it , they have it. Why, during my last visit there I counted nine different kinds of eggplant. Nine!
The best is when I bring some arcane vegetable to the checkout line and the clerk has to stop and look it up in the voluminous registrar of produce codes. I feel warm and fuzzy inside whenever I stump a clerk, especially if it is one of the old-timers that should know them all by now. I am weird.
Today’s Question: Is there a store or shop in your area that you could not live without?
Sadly, we have nothing in beautiful Central PA that compaires to your Berkeley Bowl. I actually like going down to the farmers market that they hold in town on Fri and picking up something to make for dinner. However, it is only open from july-oct and only on fri. *Sigh* Oh well… But hey, if for ever reason you are in State College PA on a Fri in the summer or early fall check it out. The Apple Cider is amazing…
hey peasprout! there is a store i can’t live without, though it is not a one-city thing. this store i am thinking of is none other than WHOLE FOODS. i love that place. =) how’s your summer going?
We have the best huge outside farmers market here called the Two EE’s. It’s well known on the lower mainland, they have the best produce and a ton of variety. Theres alot of Asian and Indian and Greek fruits and veggies too so it satisfies just about any shopper
Berkeley Bowl ROCKS!!! …once you get past being intimidated by the insane selection… I mean, PURPLE bell peppers!! wow… even for a native Berserklian (holla Alta Bates babies!) that’s pretty impressive…