You know we live in a retail town when a grocery store opening is an event. The hot, sleepy days of summer perked up when the much-anticipated Central Market finally came to town, and Dallas showed up in droves to welcome it.
I waited to visit until 9 p.m. on opening day, yet the off-duty police officers were still directing traffic into a parking lot the size of a football field that was full of cars. I parked on the farthest row, a single curb away from Lovers Lane, and joined the masses gawking their way through the aisles as if stacks of produce and racks of wine were moon rocks from outer space. Effectively drawing a crowd was a fish on ice at the seafood counter that looked like a mini-me version of the shark in Jaws.
While I did indulge in some Mexican chocolate, a key ingredient for homemade mole sauce, and a carton of lamb vindaloo curry from the takeout food counter, a la Eatzi’s, I don’t expect to make the San Antonio-based chain a regular stop on my rounds of errands.
There are a handful of specialty-food purveyors in and around Preston Hollow that fill the niche Central Market seeks to satisfy, and I hope that these family-owned businesses can successfully co-exist with the behemoth on Greenville.
Don’t get me wrong – I think the grocery store landscape in Dallas could use some shaking up. Ever since the national Safeway chain acquired Tom Thumb, the shelves frequently don’t hold what I’m looking for, and when they do, the expiration date often seems to be tomorrow. I mean, is low-fat Caesar salad dressing too much to ask for?
We do not live by bread and milk (or Caesar salad dressing) alone, and the new generation grocery purveyors recognize this, offering everything from sushi, to take-out, to vats of uniquely brined olives.
Yet in Dallas, when it comes to specialty food items, we have more options than the grocery store, and it’s those stores that I’m concerned might not be able to withstand the Central Market onslaught. I’m referring to the great breads baked by Empire Bakery, the fresh seafood and shellfish at TJ’s (no giant fish in sight), the butchered-to-order meats at Kuby’s – one of the few places in town that sells Cajun andouille sausage – and the delicious cakes and whimsically decorated cookies at family-owned Celebrity Bakery.
These stores and the others like them represent families who have made a living here providing quality products and customer service, and their presence adds to the flavor of our lives by leavening the corporate grocery store world with first-rate contributions from the hometown folks.
Yes, it’s a little more trouble to make multiple stops, and it would be nice to find under one roof all that you want to feed yourself and your family. But just as you don’t expect to purchase your entire wardrobe in one store, sometimes you can’t stock the pantry or dazzle your dinner guests without taking advantage of the best that several stores have to offer. This type of gregarious shopping is similar to the retail environment in an urban area and still the way of life in Europe, where every shop specializes and the consumer benefits from the wealth of expertise and personally-chosen bounty these shop owners provide.
I’m just afraid that an operation the size of Central Market could have a detrimental effect on the ability of these businesses to do what they do best. I’m concerned that Central Market could devastate these stores, much like the discount superstore’s effect on small-town Main Street.
So while I hope Central Market gives some of the resting-on-their-laurels grocery chains a healthy dose of competition, I don’t want its theatrics to distract us from the tried-and-true specialists whose products help us re-create a family recipe or supply the finishing touch to a delicious meal. We are lucky to have such a wealth of them to choose from in the immediate area, and as the retail landscape grows and changes to accommodate the needs of the millennium famly, I’m optimistic that our neighborhood markets and bakeries will grow and change as well.
