Field Trip: Whole Foods, Giffnock

Though it opened in the south of Glasgow in November, it was kind of inevitable that we should go eventually. Despite the distance, we had a perfectly good excuse — we have friends who live that direction in Glasgow, and so we had the perfect excuse to pop in for a cuppa after a grueling trek through packed aisles, doing our marathon shopping session. Or something like that.

Ah, Whole Paycheck. We mock you with this name, and we’d all but stopped shopping with you in the U.S. (you do have some shoddy labor issues in the U.S. inexcusable ones, we thought at the time), but it was a treat to see you again. The eternal sameness of each and every WF in the world really closed the distance between Home & Abroad for us. To walk in was amusing, because somehow, it even smelled the same.

There was the same complete and utter disregard for traffic flow, which put all the cool produce against one wall – creating the selfsame traffic jam in the produce section that happens in every WF in the world, it seems — there were the same fun and creative chalk-on-slate aisle marker illustrations (T. briefly met the guy who does them, who is our friend AB’s neighbor, the lucky, lucky man), product samples that you didn’t need (Hi Wee Fudge folks! We love you!) but take anyway, incomprehensibly expensive items like £12.99 sorbet, and £8 for two ounces of pine nuts, bottles and bottles and bottles and bottles of beverages to take the place of wine, beer, soda or even “normal” juices — elderflower and white grape cordial, anyone?? No? Perhaps ginger and apple?? White peach and hibiscus?? — and even the same smell – a slight metallic blood tang from the fish/meat counter, blended with hot cornmeal from the bottom of the breads in the bakery. It blends to make a smell uniquely Whole Foods.

If you go in on a rainy January day, there’s the added smell of wet wool, the squeak of wet carts, and the buzz of shoppers interacting in the bin section — “Wet one, isn’t it?” “Cor, listen to the wind!” “Oh, excuse me! Sorry! Are those lentils on special today?” — and the wailing of hipster music in the background – light jazz, something trendy; no sugar-synth pop or orchestral Beatles elevator Muzak to trouble you. Unlike other grocery stores, the loud voices calling so-and-so to the front are rare, as rare as people plugged in to iPhones and other devices. For some reason – maybe because it’s still new and easy to lose your way or your mind – “Those are Jerusalem artichokes? What do you do with them?” — people aren’t so tuned out.

We were a little disappointed not to see the 365 Everyday WF store brand items – but one of the strengths of Whole Foods, before it started going crazy in the U.S., was that it sourced a lot of its inexpensive items locally. It was good to see a lot of familiar stuff, organic brands and UK vegetarian staples we appreciate from our jaunts to Grassroots in Glasgow (oh, how we miss living right down the block and across the street). A store with not only rice cakes but puffed wheat cakes, millet cakes and quinoa cakes plus popcorn cakes – well, see? You can have all of your tasteless diet-y wafers in all flavor(less)s. Or, something like that.

We had a good chuckle out of seeing tons of Amy’s Kitchen products, including Amy’s Burritos, which are sold in the frozen foods aisle, and in our Santa Rosa WF was a run-in-get-one-run-out items for many of the lunch crowd, who then used the store’s microwave to heat through their meal, and consumed it on the hoof. Um, yeah. Burritos. And south of Glasgow… not really that great of a combination. AB tells us that there was a full case of burritos in the freezer department when the store opened in November… and now there are two small boxes of individually wrapped tortillas-and-beans – one with cheese and one without. And that is all. Clearly, it’s a matter of figuring out what’s going to sell, and what will sit and stare at them.

Another surprise was the amount of Jewish nosh about the place. Mind, we cannot source Fleischmann’s Yeast to save our lives around these parts, but oy, the boxes of the matzah flour, crackers, the gefilte fish, the kasha, the pickles, the Kosher this and that. It was explained to us that the south of Glasgow has a large and venerable Jewish population, and a very old reform synagogue in the area, too, thus much of the Jewish population is in the area – and is able to shop at WF… which is a Jewish-owned store to begin with. A shtik naches, it now all makes sense. (A great joy, yes?) We are now excited that we can go ahead and use up our last, hoarded (and probably not very good anymore) matzah ball mix from our last trip home!!! Because we can indeed take two trains from two different stations and find more.

(Oh, yes, did we fail to mention that? Train – from Stirling station – is forty minutes, give or take. We missed the fastest train, and took the next fastest, which left ten minutes later – into Queen Street Station, where we had to walk five city blocks to Central Station, found a train – which we missed by two minutes, thank you, we waited another twenty minutes, and took a thirty minute shuttle to Giffnock. Please add thirty-eight degree rain and gusting fifty mile per hour wind to this, and you’ll wonder why we don’t go every weekend.)

If you shop Whole Foods before mid-February, maybe you’ll run into another friend of ours, unless Junior makes an early appearance. A fellow American from chorus, our friend is working weird hours, mightily pregnant, but equally Zen and Whole Foodsish, so she’s in the right place. She can be cajoled into pointing out bargains, as she manages to do all of her shopping at WF, and still come away with some paycheck. That’s a mad Mom-to-Be Skill, so we paid attention. She can point out the line of Burt’s Bees baby products and some really cute olive wood baby utensils, too. Just in case you’re into that kind of thing.

In some ways, it’s like every other WF we’ve ever been to… and in other ways, it was still totally field-trip worthy, a fun little slice of home.