I have mostly been going to Jewel, but I've gone to Trader Joe's once and Whole Foods twice, but I did not buy much at either one of those stores.

When I went to Jewel last Thursday at 6:00pm, it was the most crowded I have seen it, and there were several kids in the store that were unsupervised. They were out of toilet paper and paper towels, but I did not need either one. They did have some flour, but no King Arthur and no bread flour. They also did not have any disinfecting stuff. I heard Target on Howard had wipes a few days ago. The strawberries at the Chicago Avenue Jewel looked awful, and I passed on them. The only thing that they did not have that I wanted was whole wheat hot dog buns. I got some poppy seed ones instead. They actually finally had 1% milk in stock too. I might go to Valli to see if their strawberries are any better.

I have visited three different Pete's locations over the last three days. I live near the Oakbrook Terrace location and my mom lives between the Glen Ellyn and Wheaton locations. Mom needed lunch meat and cheese and requires low sodium varieties. The Wheaton location carries Boars Head and Glen Ellyn does not, so I shopped Wheaton on Saturday. I went to see her today and offered to pick up produce for her so my sister wouldn't have to bring it later in the week. I shopped my OBT location on my way. I needed vegan butter and they were out, so I hit the Glen Ellyn location as well.

There is a marked difference between the three stores in how they are handling social distancing and the like. The worst of the three locations is the OBT store, the best is Glen Ellyn. The Glen Ellyn store will only let you enter through the main entrance and has yellow caution tape and cones creating a guided entryway. There is a sign posted notify customers that only 165 persons can be in the store. There is an employee that doles out the carts. Wheaton did not have a sign or restricted entrance, but did have an employee on carts. I believe they are wiping them down. No such thing at OBT and no wipes to do it yourself.

All stores have blue tape indicating one-way aisles, which customers ignore or don't notice. Glen Ellyn has the addition of signs at the end of the aisle that say "one way." All stores have plastic shields at the checkout. All stores were making announcements regarding social distancing. Glen Ellyn's funneling to the checkouts is by far the best, OBT is the worst. The deli areas have markers on the floor at six foot intervals. All employees at Wheaton wore masks and gloves, as did those in GE. I noticed a produce worker in OBT today without a mask. To add insult to injury, OBT's credit/debit card system went down while I was there and they were accepting cash only. People were abandoning their carts and walking out of the store.

I guess this comes down to individual store managers, but I know that the owner Jimmy keeps a pretty tight reign on the stores and uses lots of family in key positions. I think the other locations need to follow Glen Ellyn's lead as it made for a much more comfortable shopping experience.

I keep seeing ads on Facebook from George Fourkas Produce. Curious, I went out to their website. They are offering produce boxes for $29.99 (small - 15-18 lbs) or $39.99 (large - 23-28 lbs) with free delivery to zip codes within 30-40 miles of downtown Chicago. Could be another options for folks.

https://gfpchicago.com/

As far as I know, there's only one food that rhymes with quarantine . . .


Florentines! (from Tag's Bakery)

Our next-door neighbors' relatives own Tag's and they were nice enough to drop a box of these off for us today. IMO, they are the gold standard for Florentines. I've never had any better. FYI, Tag's is open and they're offering curbside pick-up, too.

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Tag's Bakery
2010 Central St
Evanston, IL 60201
(847) 328-1200

I'm not sure I needed to hear that Tag's is open. I always eat way too many of those Florentines if I have access to them.

ronnie_suburban wrote:IMO, they are the gold standard for Florentines.

I am a sucker for Florentines and those look terrific! I may have to fire up the AMC Pacer, don mask, gloves and cautionary condom and venture to the wilds of Evanston for a game of Tag.

Our current commercial cookie of choice, Dark Chocolate Brussels by Pepperidge Farms scratches the itch. I've also made chocolate chip cookies a few times since lock-down with ~ok results. Though, as the saying goes, even a mediocre homemade cookie lends itself to gluttony.

WhyBeeSea wrote:Someone tweeted about this last week and so I ordered 100 oysters from island creek. They have different options all which include free overnight shipping.

Was gonna order 50 but and additional 50 was only $20 extra. First 3 I had were excellent, minus the puncture I have at the base of my thumbnail. (not the oysters fault... )

https://shop.islandcreekoysters.com/

More IC Oyster offerings this week.

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G Wiv wrote:Drumlin Supper Club, count me a Fan!

Drumlin Supper Club pasta, delicious value packed meal kit.

Delivered with social distancing in mind, easy home heat and serve, I could drink the ramp pesto and live for a year on the baguette. A filling dinner for two included fresh baguette, ricotta filled agnolotti, marinara sauce and ramp pesto.




Drumlin Supper Club, count me a Fan!

ronnie_suburban wrote:As far as I know, there's only one food that rhymes with quarantine . . .

Here's another

In the cuisine category: Grenadine, submarine, sardine, almandine, galantine, aubergine, tangerine, saltine ...

Artie wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:As far as I know, there's only one food that rhymes with quarantine . . .

Here's another . . . Ovaltine

Katie wrote:Grenadine, submarine, cuisine ...

Nah, not so much. Those are all femine half rhyme, at best.

Sorry folks. I think it's clearly Florentine for the win here but thanks for playing.

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public service announcement! Mercato (online delivery vendor) now shops and delivers from LOCAL FOODS! excellent butcher treats from Butcher & Larder plus local produce, cheeses, charcuteries, great stuff, and much less waiting than instacart.

G Wiv wrote:Drumlin Supper Club pasta, delicious value packed meal kit.

Delivered with social distancing in mind, easy home heat and serve, I could drink the ramp pesto

Drumlin Supper Club leftover ramp pesto, tasty on today's lunch, tomato, mozzarella, egg and matzo. Mildly eclectic mix, but tasty.

Unless you are a masochist who enjoys low-quality and damaged products, incomplete deliveries, post-confirmation out-of-stocks, being billed for items you didn't receive, late deliveries and deliveries made to the wrong address, best to avoid Imperfect Produce. I've been getting weekly boxes from them since early April and have yet to experience a single order that didn't come with multiple problems. They could be the worst of all the online grocery delivery services.

I appreciate their mission, which is why I signed up in the first place, but the execution is absolutely brutal. They really should call themselves Imperfect Meat because they butcher every order. Incompetent Produce, would also be a good fit.

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Imperfect Produce has always had some problems, but I think since the pandemic they have been overrun with lots of new customers, and they have not been able to keep up. When I tried to just find some reviews for IP, I discovered that they have changed their name to Imperfect Foods, and they are now also selling dairy, nuts and other things.

As an asthmatic, I don't plant to set foot inside a grocery store for the foreseeable future. We've been experimenting with various options for delivery/curbside pickup, and I made my first-ever Instacart purchase a couple of weeks ago from Costco. I haven't stopped by LTH in a while for various reasons, but somehow, a Facebook ad that I was just served informing me that curbside pickup is coming soon to Seafood City made me think to stop by here and see what experiences other people have had.

We signed up for Tomato Mountain's CSA, and so far everything we have gotten from them has been awesome. They have had some hiccups with delivery schedules, but that's to be expected when their membership has quadrupled (!) in the past 3 months. They have now capped new membership.

We have done a couple of rounds of curbside pickup from HarvesTime. Good experiences, but a couple of mistakes in addition to the substitutions (I ordered turnips and got turnip greens, for example, so I had to figure out what to do with 3 gigantic bunches of them in short order).

I did a round of curbside pickup from Marian's on Elston - generally a good experience, although I did get charged for 2 items (celery and cilantro) that weren't included with my order.

I have ordered on Mercato.com a couple of times from CityFresh Market and World Fresh Market on Devon Ave. and Also good experience - prompt delivery, no random substitutions. Sometimes it's not clear on the Mercato website what the unit of each item is - are you ordering a pound, or an item? I ordered what I thought was 8 heads of garlic for $0.01 each, which I thought was a great price, and we go through a lot of garlic. We ended up with 8 1 lb. boxes of garlic! Needless to say, that was an even greater price (organic, too), and we will not need to replenish the garlic supply for a looooong time. (There are now two gallon bags of minced garlic in the freezer, plus another bag of whole cloves, and giant jars of mojo de ajo and garlic confit in the fridge.)

Our most recent order was from Fresh Farms on Devon Ave. via what looks like a new effort by some of the independent businesses to avoid the Instacart cartel - https://www.myvalue365.com/. This was the first grocery order we have made since the start of the pandemic that had no substitutions or missing items that we were charged for. And they even had dried chickpeas, which have been out of stock in many places. Free delivery with a $30 order; just a $0.99 packing fee, which would basically cover the cost of gas for me to drive there and back. Awesome experience, and I will definitely do that again - it's crazy what mainstream grocers charge for spices, and we were out of coriander and bay leaves. I only wish we were in the delivery area for the Niles Fresh Farms, which has a much wider selection. (And I miss the fish counter there!)

I wish more of the smaller ethnic groceries would offer curbside pickup - I saw at one point that Andy's Deli on Milwaukee was doing that, but they don't have an online storefront. I emailed the address on their website and never heard back from them. And I am seriously about to call Sahar and see if I can talk them into taking my credit card over the phone...

Hi- Has anybody ordered from Top Box Foods lately? I don't live in their delivery area in Evanston, but a friend of mine does, and she is interested in ordering a salmon box, but she is also wondering if I would split it with her, and I don't know about that. Has anybody here ordered anything but produce from them, such as meat or fish? Is it good? They charge $23 for a four pound box of salmon.

I told her that she should sign up for the produce box too, because everybody here that has ordered one has been happy with it. Last year she went to the farmer's market with me a couple of times a month. I offered to give her a ride again this year, but I think she is overwhelmed about all the protocol, and wearing a mask and waiting in line and figuring out who prefers cash and who prefers not dealing with money, and plus the market is more expensive this year.

Has anybody ordered the produce box lately too? I am wondering how much local produce they give you. Thanks, Nancy

Hi,

I am not in their delivery area, though Evanston is (or was).

I picked up a Top Box shipment via a friend in Evanston. I only did it once, largely because I was curious about the process.

Regards,
Cathy2

Top Box only delivers up to Dempster in Evanston. They currently only deliver once a month on the 4th Friday/Saturday of the month. I don't know why they do not deliver near ETHS. It seems like they would have a lot of people in that neighborhood that would be in there target audience.

Meijer is changing how their online pickup shopping works. Before they used a third party (IIRC it was Shipt), but now their own employees are retrieving your items. It's a flat $5 charge for this service, but tipping isn't allowed like before. One downside is that your shopper won't text you like before for substitutions. But if there's a substitution you don't want, you can decline it when you pick it up so it's very similar to how Walmart's pick up works now.

I know there was a gourmet food product wholesaler that is now offering retail sales/pick-up mentioned on LTH in the past few months, but I can't seem to find it with a search. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

thaiobsessed wrote:I know there was a gourmet food product wholesaler that is now offering retail sales/pick-up mentioned on LTH in the past few months, but I can't seem to find it with a search. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

It might have been Regalis Chicago. I've purchased some pretty cool stuff from them. They have partially shifted back to wholesale but are still doing some retail sales, too. They don't really have a website but you can sign up for their regular, stock-list emails. Orders are placed by email, after which electronic invoices are sent back to the buyer for payment. It's a pretty easy setup.

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I can vouch for Regalis/Queens, NY. Especially regarding their high quality truffle oils which are spore-infused, not synthetic. And, their rep. is a hell of a lot better than that of Urbani. Also, see Ian Purkayastha's book, Truffle Boy. I sold their products and worked with their vendors at Eli's (Zabar's) Manhattan and Bedford Cheese Shop, Irving Place.
Especially-deserving of mention is their Tennessee truffle honeycomb which is magic when paired with the hyper-seasonal Fort St. Antoine 3 yr Comte'.

Christopher Gordon wrote:I can vouch for Regalis/Queens, NY. Especially regarding their high quality truffle oils which are spore-infused, not synthetic. And, their rep. is a hell of a lot better than that of Urbani. Also, see Ian Purkayastha's book, Truffle Boy. I sold their products and worked with their vendors at Eli's (Zabar's) Manhattan and Bedford Cheese Shop, Irving Place.
Especially-deserving of mention is their Tennessee truffle honeycomb which is magic when paired with the hyper-seasonal Fort St. Antoine 3 yr Comte'.

Thanks, for the intel. Good to have expert guidance on items like these.

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ronnie_suburban wrote:It might have been Regalis Chicago.

That's it! Thanks Ronnie_S (and Christopher) for the intel

I've placed 16 orders with Imperfect Foods (nee Imperfect Produce) since April and only once in those 16 times has an order arrived without at least one problem. That's really an awful average of nearly 94% getting something wrong. I appreciate their concept and their mission but the incompetence is why I have almost completely stopped ordering from them.

I decided to order this week just to get a few items that seem to only be available from them. Not surprisingly, when the delivery arrived, those items were not in my box and instead there were multiple packages of ground bison meat that I did not order. So, once again, I had to go to my computer after they showed up and waste my time protecting myself from their error. Just brutal.

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Fool me once...shame on you.

Fool me 15 times...

jimd wrote:Fool me once...shame on you.

Fool me 15 times...

Lol. In current times, I try to be understanding about matters like these but I think I've finally run out of patience with them.

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ronnie_suburban wrote:I've placed 16 orders with Imperfect Foods (nee Imperfect Produce) since April and only once in those 16 times has an order arrived without at least one problem.

Are you sure "Imperfect" doesn't extend to the whole shopping experience? I'd read the fine print just to make sure.