🏷️ grocery

The Washington Market is a very spiffy-looking clean grocery store and deli located on Ellicott street between Chippewa and Tupper Streets.

It doesn't really seem like one combined grocery store. Rather, it gives you the feeling that you are walking through a food court or a market - hence the name, perhaps. Somehow, I was very impressed with the fact that the floors were SO clean. I don't know why I was so attracted to the floors or why I paid so much attention to them. I think it was the lighting. They have really bright lighting in the grocery section of the market.

The marketplace starts out with a small "lobby area" which has newspapers and periodicals in racks to your right. The ceiling is high and the right wall is covered in a big and colourful mural, depicting a period marketplace. To the left is a small check-out counter and rack of baked goods. At 5:30 PM, they had an interesting array of breads such as Rye, Italian, Sourdough etc. The prices of the baked goods rivaled those at Wegmans - but I am not sure if the breads were baked in the store.

Next is a small produce section, with a variety of veggies with prices equivalent to the Lexington Coop (Read: Pricey).

If you walk further down the centre of the market, on your left is a small dessert bar with cakes and cookies, followed by a salad bar, that had a variety of cheese salads on sale for a low price per pound. Further down is a sandwich bar and meat market.To your right is a nifty seating area with small tables and high stools.

The sandwich bar had about 3-4 varieties of Tribe Hummus - at a price cheaper than at Wegman's ($2.19 as compared to $2.59 at Wegman's). They also had the Tribe Garden-Veggie hummus which I have never seen at Wegman's.

At the very end of the market are the grocery aisles. This is the most brightly lit part of the market. The light is so bright, all the bottles on the shelves reflect the light and you feel as if you are shopping in a space-ship with silver walls.

Surprisingly, the grocery aisles had a very varied assortment of international foods. To give you an idea of the variety, if you take the Wegman's international aisle, added some Guercio's Italian aisles to it and a sprinkling from the international aisles at the Lexington Coop, you would have the grocery aisles of Washington Market. In fact, I think the whole grocery space was filled with international foods and had very few "regular" groceries. They had the *entire* range of south-east Asian cooking sauces from the "House of Tsang" brand - for about $3.something each. The snack aisle had food with an ethnic/organic tint - eg. Terra potato chips, rice crispies, NY pita chips etc.

The very back of the store has the frozen food, milk and juice section. The prices throughout the Washington Market were not something to dance about. They looked very standard to me, say, compared to any other non-chain-store in town. There were no discounts and no sale-prices - just prices which had been designed to make a decent profit for the store.

To conclude, I would say that this is a clean and well-kept market to go for emergency international groceries, some regular groceries and perhaps meats and breads or for an occasional sandwich/salad . However, don't expect any drastic savings.

Thanks to @drew who tipped me about this grocery store.

The Lexington General Store is a unique (and somewhat weird) hybrid store; a cross between what could have been a very cool Spot Coffee type of café/European cheese market and one of the handful of corner grocery stores that dot Buffalo's downtown terrain.

Points in favour of a trendy café are lofty ceilings, walls in earthy tones, unknown ambient alternative accoustic music, an ice-cream bar called "Scoops", a few sit-down tables, a kitchen-like shelf with assorted groceries, a very chic handpainted sign announcing the name of the store and benches artistically fashioned from unfinished tree-logs. Points in favour of a corner grocery store are the wildly disorganized groceries, veggies and fruits in a few random cardboard boxes, carbonated drink, milk and juice coolers and newspapers (I saw The New York Times at this store).

In contrast to the coop, which is neither on Lexington, nor a true "cooperative" and is thus a prime example of an appellative deception, the Lexington General Store lives up to its name. It is located on the south-east corner of Lexington and Ashland Avenues (next door to the famed Kuni's) and is about as general as a store can get.

The two pieces of merchandise that this store is absolutely worth making the hike for are:
$1 for 1/2 gallon milk --> Think about all the milk money you will save!! (The store had fat-free, 2% and 1% Upstate Farm milk today)
0.75 cents for a scoop of ice-cream: They had a decent selection of flavours. The ice-cream bar also had a cold-coffee-ice-cream shake for $1.75, that looked interesting. I think I will try this next time. I wonder how it compares to the $3.75 java shake from SPoT Coffee.

The veggies and fruits in the boxes today were:
6 fresh ears of corn for $0.99 (1 more than Wegmans, but the corn looked somewhat sad)
Green bell peppers for $0.50 each
Oranges for $0.35 each
Pound of grapes for $1.99
Onions for $0.45/lb
Potatoes for $2/huge bag (5lb?)
Sad looking bananas at $0.35/lb
Hot green peppers at $0.25 each.

The huge kitchen shelf was packed to capacity with everything ranging from salt to pasta to olives in brine. (Don't ask me what the "everything" comprised; the store was lit by cool-looking but dim lighting from globe lamps that hung from the lofty ceiling).

The store has two glass-door coolers - one in the front for the carbonated drinks, water and small-bottle juices, and another in the back for milk and big-bottle juices (eg. 100% grape juice for $2.99).

They also have a wide assortment of cheap candy and lollipops - ranging from just $0.01 each to about $0.10 each. There is also a side-table with desserts such as chocolate eclairs, crossants, apple turnovers, and some fruit pies.

On the whole, the Lexington General Store is waaaay cooler than your average corner grocery store but can't quite decide whether it wants to climb into the hardcore grocery pool or float around in the hip café scene cloud. Somewhere in between though, it did decide to have excellent consumer-friendly prices. Definitely worth many visits!

PS: I just hope that no one at the store reads this review and decides to hike the prices tomorrow.

365 Connecticut Street, Buffalo, NY.

I checked out this grocery store on Tuesday evening as I was craving for some good stir fry sauce. The store is located at the north-east corner of the intersection between Normal Ave and Connecticut Street. I thought it might be a Thai store but it turned out to be a Vietnamese store. The word "Phuthai" is apparently Vietnamese for either "money" or the "state of being rich" - certainly something to do with money, wealth or prosperity or maybe just "rich people". I had trouble deciding which one of the three very animated women in the store, I should go with. As you can see, I am such an impartial (or impaired, depending on your viewpoint) person. :)


(I love the birds-eye view! Thanks Paul!)

Fresh produce at Phuthai consisted of 3 different types of mangoes, lemon grass, basil, about 5 different types of south-east-asian greens, tomatoes, green marrow veggie, okra (Chinese and Indian), green mini-aubergines, snow peas, ginger, chillies and some more stuff which was packed away in frost covered plastic bags in the refrigerated display. Their "fresh-veggie" day is Thursday. They apparently love keeping the customers guessing so there were no price tags on any of the produce. I wanted to believe that everything was free but alas, I was billed for the produce I bought. The good news is things are fairly inexpensive.

The store had a bigger section of south-east-asian sodas/drinks than any store I have seen in downtown Buffalo, so far. @metalpeter, take note :)

Phuthai also had seafood and meats, but having subsisted on organisms without any kind of nervous system for the entire span of my life, the finer culinary aspects of seafood and meats elude me. The store had many canned beans and chinese/vietnamese foods, gift and kitchen knick-knacks and about 50 different varieties of rice/tapioca/egg/pasta noodles.

And the main thing that I was scouting the store for -> Stirfry sauce, was available in about 10 different varieties, but a majority of them had chicken broth as their component. They had half gallon bottles of pad-thai sauce which looked like it might have been delicious, but I was not prepared to get half a gallon of sauce I hadn't even tried before. The non-veggie ingredient in this sauce was oyster sauce (which I usually don't mind, but I didn't feel like taking that huge bottle home)

I did spend some time looking at the ingredients of all the stir-fry sauces and I think the stir-fry industry is as enamoured with high fructose corn syrup as the rest of the food industry. I have no idea what the huge attraction for this component is. Is it like an elixir of taste or something?? I see it in *everything* sweet. I know the corn industry has an evil coercing influence, but ugh, this is blind submission.

The whole high-fructose corn syrup obsession and the half-gallon sauce bottles spurred me into making my own stir-fry sauce (with a little help from the extensive perusal of ingredients on various stir-fry bottles over the past two years)

My recipe for (non-fructose corn syrup) stir-fry sauce was:
1. Water
2. Fresh Lemon Grass
3. Soy Sauce
4. Garlic
5. Ginger
6. Cilantro powder
7. Tamarind concentrate
8. Red hot chillie powder
9. Salt

Cut up fresh lemon grass into small pieces and drop into water, bring to a boil, add tamarind concentrate, ginger (Small pieces), cilantro powder, red chillie powder, salt, dry toasted garlic and soy sauce and turn off the stove. Let it sit for 15 minutes. Voila! You have a non-high-fructose-corn-syrup-home-made absolutely DELICIOUS stir fry sauce. I made a stir-fry veggie mix and rice on Tuesday with this stir-fry sauce and I think I can safely say that I won't be buying any more store-made stir-fry sauces ever again!

I finally located my camera's USB cord. It was carefully coiled and fitted into my coffee making filter - that was fitted into a mug that was packed in a woolen stocking that was under a pile of other assorted lost items in my humongous suitcase that I opened and rifled through today.

For people who lost their patience, that means I can post more pictures. :)

I trooped to the Clinton-Bailey market Saturday morning - it took me an hour and a half to get there because I didn't stick to the very careful instructions that Jessalyn (at work) gave me. I did mean to, but here's what went wrong --instead, of going downtown and taking Bus No. 2, I took 22 and landed on the Walden-Bailey crossing at precisely 8:30 (yeah, I got up late.). and waited an hour for the 19 to Clinton-Bailey. In the hour I was there, I saw 4 Bus No. 6s. I thought that was most unfair.

The Clinton-Bailey farmer's market is about a minute walk west of the Clinton-Bailey crossing. It's a bigger market than the Elmwood-Bidwell farce and has a much more wider variety of produce.


I was told that the wholesale farmers come to the market as early as 4:00 am and the ones that remain in the market after 7:00 am are not the wholesalers but the regular small scale farmers. Which means I can't buy wholesale at all since I am pathologically incapable of waking up so early when my brain knows it's Saturday!

However, most of the "small scale" farmers had HUGE trucks filled with produce - since they set up shop from 7:00 am in the morning to around 4:00 pm evening.


Prices were very reasonable - $1 for 3 big zucchinis:



$1 for a lb of grapes (green/red)
$1.50 for a lb of peaches
$2 for a box of blueberries



$4 for an enormous basket of cucumbers.


The better looking produce was usually costlier.

An exception was this farmer who was selling very fresh red/green/yellow peppers @ $1 for 3



Produce was the not the only focus of this market. The covered shed hosted multiple "garage sales".


Just outside the covered shed was a stall selling various brick-brack including fake flowers.


If you got tired strolling through the market, you could sit down and enjoy the sunshine on these flower-flanked benches scattered thoughtfully throughout the market.



And I was not the only one with a camera.



On the whole, I liked the market, but its a bit too far away from downtown for regular grocery trips. The prices are good but not extraordinarily low enough to entice me into investing a major part of my day just getting there. Recommended: for the best and the cheapest fresh peppers in recent grocery trips + a variety of reasonably priced seasonal fruits/berries/veggies, if you have the whole Saturday morning to spare.

A'Chau 2 Oriental Food Market, 833 Niagara St, Buffalo, NY 14213

This Vietnamese store is located at the east corner of the crossing between Rhode Island Street and Niagara Street. The name A'Chau apparently means "Asia". For those intrigued by the "2" in the store's name - the owner told me that they had (still have?) a branch of the store elsewhere in Buffalo, and that this is the second branch.

A'Chau is primarily a seafood/meat grocery. Those really into seafood should check out this place sometime. There was enough specialty seafood variety on its shelves to make me wonder if they had caught, processed and bagged every creature in the Pacific, the Atlantic and maybe all the local lakes and rivers, put together. The frozen/refrigerated meat section also looked quite extensive. I am not sure what the prices were like, though.

The vegetable section had no less than 26 different varieties of south-east Asian greens (yes, I counted!). (This is a handy guide to greens: ) It also had lemon-grass,thai-basil, mint, galangal and kaffir lime/lime leaves. However, none of the greens were out in boxes, as is common practice in Chinese stores I have been to. They were all packed away in plastic bags and in cold storage. The owner told me that the "fresh-vegetable-day" for the store was Tuesday, and that the "seafood-day" was Friday - when things come in from NYC. That could have explained the refrigerated produce or maybe the store is especially careful about not losing any of the produce due to lack of refrigeration.

The prices for the greens and the rest of the veggies/fruits (Cucumber, Chayote, Green Beans, Onions, Potatoes, Eggplant, Okra, Cabbage, Bitter gourd, green papaya, jackfruit, lichee, tomatoes, (sad-looking) mangoes, apples, watermelon, persimmon etc.) were at par (maybe slightly lower) with say, Wegmans. They are not as low as Guercio's which makes it hard to justify daily grocery shopping here, unless the objective is to cook specifically with those 26 delicious varieties of greens.

I was mildly bothered that the prices were not very prominently displayed and that I had to ask the owner for the price, each time I was interested in anything. He had to take the plastic bags out of the fridge and weigh them on the check-out counter to tell me what the price was. Some bags had price tags stuck on them, but it was difficult to see them well without opening the door of the fridge.

Additional attractions in this store included Shitaké mushrooms and other wild Asian mushrooms (wood-ear/cloud-ear, button, oyster), several different varieties of rice noodles/vermicilli and a million different varieties of stir-frying/cooking sauces, spice-medley-pastes and flavoured oils (I even saw a duck-flavoured sauce specifically for basting spring-rolls).

The store has a shelf of green teas, snacks similar to the ones in any corner grocery store (chips, puffs etc) but labeled in Vietnamese/French, the usual selection of southeast Asian crockery, small strange gifts, exotic snacks, soaps/detergents/cosmetics etc. As a unique touch, they had ornamental (perhaps) traditional swords in black scabbards with filigreed silver trims for about $30 each hanging by the check-out counter.

The two other oriental stores in the vicinity that I had planned on scoping out were either closed or non-existent. The "99 Oriental Food Store" [837 Niagara St, Buffalo, NY 14213] across the street from A'Chau, was boarded-up and locked. As an additional sign of dereliction, its closed glass doors were cracked with what seemed like a mob-stone-attack. The "Buffalo Asian Market" [594 Niagara St, Buffalo, NY 14201] was untraceable. If anyone has had better luck in locating this store, please feel free to add a comment.

I thought the neighbourhood was fairly safe to walk on except for a few people who seemed to think I might have a dollar to spare for them. I might not venture out here after dark though.

I am sure this huge chain needs no introduction to "Upstaters" and there is really no need for an official review, but I was somewhat impressed by the Wegmans on Amherst St. today and feel impelled to share. :)

I am not sure how many of you have heard about their leviathan branch in Pittsford, NY (for those not familiar with it, here's a review: ), but in my opinion, the Amherst St. Wegmans almost compares to the Pittsford one, and in some instances, is even more spiffy!

I loved the full-scale functional toy train with all the bells and whistles above the bulk candy in the store. The Pittsford leviathan doesn't have anything half as interesting as this! The cheese selection and the hummus/olive selections are as good, if not better and the bread section had some very interesting pita bread - 5 different types of naan! missi roti, low-carb-high-fibre (28%) pita, Markook-Roumali, Kalamata bread; varieties I have never seen at Pittsford. Its possible they were introduced in the last month but its equally possible that they are local to this branch. Plus they had a far wider variety of wegmans, tribe and summer-fresh hummus. (still recommend the ones at Guercio's btw) .

Their bulk food section had the cheapest banana chips (sweetened *and* unsweetened) I have seen; imported from the Philippines and fried in coconut oil. They also had a wide variety of dried fruits, flax seeds and cereal at reasonable prices. So I don't recommend the Lexi Coop for bulk cereal/nuts/dried fruits anymore. This is a much better place to get them.

Their tea selection, though not as extensive as one at Pittsford, is still impressive. They had almost the entire Twinings catalogue there. And they have a fresh Pizza corner.

Spent a couple hours just wandering through the store today and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of it! Recommended for leisure grocery shopping, if not regular.

Lexington Coop: 807 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, 14222 -->On the southeast corner of Lancaster Avenue and Elmwood Avenue.

I have been to this grocery about three times now and though I find it to be rather expensive in general, I think it has some very cool stuff on its shelves and some things are reasonably priced.

I would especially recommend it for NOTHING. the orange juice ($1.89/half gallon) and the bulk dried fruits/nuts/cereal. It is also one of the very few places around downtown Buffalo that sells Al-free deodorants.

I love how this place always has the right kind of scents in every aisle! I wonder how they manage that. In the produce aisle, it smells like fresh tomatoes and sometimes bell peppers. In the cosmetics aisle, it smells earthy and cool - I think it might be the handmade soaps. In the bread aisle, it smells of wheat and cinnamon. In the small kitchen/salad bar, it smells... well, simply delicious. They have lavender soaked cleansing towels near the entrance and it smells great when someone grabs and uses one! You can actually smell the delicate scent of lavender for about 30 metres all around the store.

The prices in the produce/bread section are, as I mentioned before, expensive. I know I might sound like the crabby old lady that @zobar mentioned in his comment, but I just can't bring myself to buy any of the produce or the breads here. They are really fresh and very tempting but the temptation goes out as soon as you see that they are priced a whole $1 - $2 more than the rest of the grocery stores around downtown. As an example, the 160g loaves of Banana-nut, Date-nut, Zucchini-nut bread from a bakery called "Perfectly baked breads and desserts" (?) is $2.50 instead of the $1.50 at which it is sold at Guercio's and in the Elmwood-Bidwell market. I know the store needs to make a profit, but this is almost a 66% increase in price.

I am guessing the store is located in a relatively affluent neighbourhood, so people who buy here do not really need to worry about paying a couple dollars more for each of their groceries. But in the long run, the extra dollars do add up to a sizeable amount.

Recommended: For orange juice, bulk dried foods, healthy cosmetics (well, they do have a monopoly here).
Not Recommended: For poor graduate students and people who are looking to stretch their dollar.

EDIT: NOT RECOMMENDED FOR ANYONE.
PS: They hiked the price of the orange juice to 2.49/half-gallon. That makes the hike to this store for one single item totally worthless; especially when I can get orange juice at Guercio's for cheaper. Yeah, you heard it Lexi, you can suck that half-gallon orange juice up your nose, you 32% price-hiker, you!!

"Farmer's Market": Elmwood & Bidwell, Saturdays: 8:00 AM - 2:00 PM

This was a letdown. A huge... no an enormously disappointing one. I know people praise it to the heavens and I went expecting the place to be jam-packed with farmers - and I mean genuine farmers from all across WNY. I went in and had to retrace my steps to see if this was indeed the famed farmer's market. Don't get me wrong. The setting was great. Sunshiny day, fiddlers playing melodies, a live bee apiary and a stall by the Elmwood Village Association promoting the Buffalo Old Home Week. What was missing were farmers. There were approximately 18-20 stalls and about 6 had fresh produce! The produce was shiny and fresh, but the prices were astronomical. I mean $3 for a small head of lettuce is atrocious! I had a sneaking suspicion that the "farmers" were residents from around the park selling stuff from their kitchen gardens. The prices strengthened that suspicion.

Alright, I may be a bit biased. But I am strongly of the opinion that this is not what a farmer's market looks or feels like, having regularly been to a few across the country. A genuine farmer's market is where people can go and buy bulk produce at prices waaaay cheaper than your local supermarket. A farmer's market definitely is not a bunch of elitists selling produce for triple the price of any corner store. If you want to see a real farmer's market, pay a visit to Rochester's Public Market: ( ) on Saturdays. You will know what the competition looks like.

The "farmer's market" at Elmwood & Bidwell won't get any further patronage from me. Thanks to this disgrace, I had one severe episode of heart-breaking nostalgia for Rochester. :(

Bills Food Mart, 32 Allen St, Buffalo, NY 14202

Location: At the southwest corner of the Allen & North Pearl Street crossing, a block away from Main Street.

The best thing about this store is that it seems to have a little bit of everything. However, the "everything" is somewhat haphazardly organized and somewhat dusty at places.

The produce section today had plastic-wrapped lettuce, tomatoes, bananas, potatoes, onions, lemons, limes and some more fruits that I cannot recall very well. Half the produce is in a glass enclosed (maybe chilled?) container to your left as you enter the store and the other half is in sacks further down the 1st aisle to your right. However, the two halves together did not catch my fickle fancy. That said, the prices did seem very reasonable.

This store had a funny feel to it. It seemed like a small store when I entered but like Dr. Who's transcendental Tardis, it expanded and expanded to finally emerge as a rather big store! I crossed aisle after aisle of merchandise, jammed to capacity.

The store has a crowded feel to it and I had to look hard and twice to remember stuff. It had the usual 800 million snacks and a whole wall of sodas, juices etc. In addition, it had milk and a surprising variety of dried lentils/beans. It also had a cheese section, fresh coffee (maybe?.. two coffee machines occupied central pedestals in the store), a meat section, cleaning supplies, toiletries, 1000 million cans of stuff, spices (!), pasta sauces, pickled stuff (cucumber, peppers, olives etc), sandwich components (things in brine/vinegar), half a wall of frozen ready-to-(h)eat food etc.

In spite of my initial impression of haphazardness, I now think there was some method to the madness. The first 2/5th of the store was all edible, the second 1/5th was non-edible supplies, the last 1/5th was drinkable (soda, juice, alcoholic beverages, milk, yogurt etc) or eatable (frozen stuff) and the front 1/5th was cheese, speciality meats, newspapers, cancer-sticks etc

To conclude, I think this store has tons of potential to be something better, with a little organization and a little cleaning. I would consider going here for produce/supply emergencies, however I would also double-check to see if the stuff I bought were well within safe limits of their expiry dates.

Guercio & Sons Inc: 250 Grant St, Buffalo, NY 14213

Since I got off school early today, I decided to make the piligrimage to this famed store and boy, it *deserves* its fame! The produce is varied, rich, high quality and ****CHEAP****!!!

The produce list is really long and would probably come close to the bigger supermarkets (doesn't include lemon grass, galangel and imported passion fruit, but you get the idea...). Highlights included fresh cilantro bunches for 79c each, Tomatoes-on-the-vine for 99c/lb, homegrown zucchini and squash for 79c/lb and farm-fresh romaine lettuce for 99c/HUGE head. This store, to twist the clichéd phrase a bit, bangs your buck and smashes it against the wall in a resounding ricochet.

I sailed into the store 1 hour before closing time (the store is open till 6 PM everyday, except Sundays and holidays) and there was still bread on its shelves. I imagine the bread selection might have been more interesting in the morning, but nothing extraordinary in the evening. The bread shelves had a strong scent of rye-bread, since that was the bread that was least bought. I picked out a whole-wheat pita bread imported from canada and it tastes great!

The Hummus (on the cold shelves to the extreme right wall of the store as you enter) is extraordinary! Its a brand called "Athenos" (http://athenos.com/) and tastes far far far better than the Tribe and other brands available at Tops/Wegmans/Sam's club. The price is a whole $1 less than the varieties at Tops/Wegman's.
I got two varieties today:
-- Spicy three pepper
-- Greek style with Garlic, Lemon & Oregano
Both are mouth-watering. I just had a whole-wheat pita sandwich with the hummus spread loaded with a salad of produce from Guercio's. I am in gastronomical heaven. :)

The store has about 500 million varieties of pasta and a whole wall of cheeses. It also has a sandwich and salad bar, shelves of pasta sauces, many different varieties of rice (slightly expensive), bottled/canned sandwich components eg. olives, banana peppers (in vinegar/brine), a whole range of spices, an Italian version of Indian "curry" powder (hehe ;)), some snacks, Italian sweet snacks, other possibly Italian special stuff (not being Italian, I have no idea where these might be used), curious little knick-knacks, a whole shelf with very fancy-looking fruit preserves ($1.99 each), many different types of teas etc. This is, of course, not a very comprehensive list but I was in a hurry and didn't get to do my usual leisurely stroll-stare in the store. I will add to this post after future visits.

Location: For people walking from downtown, the best way to get to Guercio's would be walk down Elmwood till Lafayette Avenue, turn left and walk down till you reach Grant St, turn right and find Guercio & Sons to the left of the street. Walking down West Ferry and turning into Grant Street is *NOT* recommended. As you might have guessed, I took the non-recommended route while walking to the store. The positive thing that came out of taking the non-recommended route was that I located an interesting looking market at the corner of W. Ferry and Grant (future review?). The somewhat doubtful experience consisted of walking down about 4 blocks of Grant Street which were shuttered, graffiti'ed and crawled with not-so-great characters whom you might not want to meet in a side-street alone. The end of West-Ferry-beginning-Grant-Street is best avoided. However, walking down Lafayette is a nice experience. You might get soaked by a few over-zealous garden sprinklers, but otherwise quite a scenic route.

Guercio & Sons Incorporated: Highly Recommended for daily groceries, arcane Italian stuff, thousand different types of pastas and SPLENDID hummus. Downers: a somewhat sketchy location and a lengthy walk (which is worse with a full load of groceries on your shoulders).