Thanks to (e: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.

Let me just say, I LOVED this little breakfast place. It was perfect, from start to finish. The endless cups of coffee were heart-warming and the waiters and waitresses at this place were cheerful, generous and went out of their way to make us feel totally happy!

I got the tofu-potato-caramelized onion hash with bean-chili and cornbread. It was gorgeous to look at and absolutely delicious. It may not have been a standard breakfast but was surprisingly very light and also satisfying at the same time. The cornbread had green peppers and spices in it!! It was delightful!

My friend got the 3 egg omlette with caramelized onions, feta, spinach and potatoes. I tasted some of it and even though I am not a big fan of the eggy smell, the omlette did seem tasty.

My cup of coffee was refilled nearly 4 times and they kept asking me if I was sure I didn't want one more cup!

The whole place looks cheerful because of the bright bold colours. The people working in the place make it even better with their happy chatter and personal attention to the customers. The prices are just right - not too cheap and not overpriced. You could get a good breakfast and coffee for about $10 (without tip)

Maybe this place shot up my expectations early in the day and Trattoria Aroma couldn't live up to it? I can't say.

I would HIGHLY recommend this place for a very happy and well-put-together tasty breakfast. :)

I went to Trattoria Aroma with my friend yesterday and we ordered some fancy-named pizzas. Mine was a white one with olives, spinach, onions and cheese and her's was the one with cherry tomatoes, onions, mushrooms and cheese. Unfortunately, I can't seem to remember what they were called on the menu.

Overall, it was okay, but I think I am not super overjoyed with this place. I would still recommend Panaro's over any pizza place I have ever been to. Some points which turned me off were:

- Our waitress had this godawful snobby expression on her face - as if it was an arduous chore for her to deal with us. She practically grimaced when I asked her to replace the meat on the pizza with mushrooms. I could have easily attributed this to tiredness or having generally a bad day if it were not painfully obvious that she was bending over backwards accomodating orders and grinning ear to ear at the customers who were at the next two tables.

-My pizza had so many olives on it, I couldn't taste anything else anymore. It was thin crust and all, but it was not balanced at all.

- The place (inside) has flies! We were constantly swatting away the flies, it was most annoying.

- The restroom had 2 stalls, one of them had no toilet paper and the other didn't lock at all.

I think the place has an upscale feel about it, but I don't think that justifies anyone making customers feel out of place - especially when you are not really making any huge demands or complaining about anything! I particularly resent waitresses who are ultra snobby and condescending.

Prices of pizzas range from $12 and upwards. The pizza sizes are generous and you should think twice before ordering two.

I know people have had good experiences at this place, but unfortunately I cannot recommend it. :(

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. (e: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!