I was one of the original posters and haters of this place right when it opened.
Ive been going a little more often lately because I feel they have made several improvements of things that bugged me originally (and I hate Jewel). Im still in withdrawl, missing "my" Whole Foods on Greeneaf and Chicago Avenue!
Valli's beer selection has been really upgraded and now includes Evanston breweries Sketchbook and Temperance and other local brands like half acre, revolution, three floyds and alot more regional and national good beers.
Their meat selection is much better, still with the offal and weird cuts, but now featuring fresh turkey breasts, big meaty short ribs, pork shoulders, thick cut chops and some organic/free range beef options, as well as a crazy display of dry aged beef and tomahawk steaks (who buys these?). Valli has become my go to place for BBQ and slow cooker meats.
They figured out how to cook rotisserie chicken and I havent had a badly burned one in a long time.
They have alot more checkout staff and getting through the lines is really quick.
On the negative side, the store can sometimes smell terrible, like rotting fish and food. Also the meat dept guys still pretty much dont speak English. They still have aisles and aisles of weird euro cookies and stuff that seems like a waste of space. The produce is also still hit or miss.