A Girl...

Ain't Nobody Fresh as Me

Last night, after two years of living in Berkeley, we finally made it to the Berkeley Bowl. Yes, we too thought it was a bowling alley at first. A very popular bowling alley that is mobbed from opening to closing every single day, the parking lot a veritable showground for Volvos, the queue at the door a snake of men in khakis, forest green fleece vests, and Free Tibet ball caps and women in sage-colored sweaters and chunky knit scarves (yes, in July), their hair either frizzed out like a graying aura or dark dark brown and cut straight as a ruler exactly at the jawline. Strange bowlers indeed.

It's actually a "market," or, as we former suburb kids like to call it in our native vernacular, a "grocery store." Ooooh, aaaaah. This place has the local legend status of Krispy Kreme Donuts and real Italian gelato: people just can't seem to talk about it without drooling on themselves, bulging their eyes, using wild hand gestures, and speaking in a very loud voice while overusing words like "fresh." It has the reputation of being the IKEA of produce, so we are ourselves shocked that we hadn't braved the crowds to check it out earlier.

So last night, after our neighbor George told us Berkeley Bowl was the source of the Copper Creek salmon he was grilling underneath our window (officially declared the BEST FISH in the universe and beyond after we ate the generous sample he generously saved for us), and he did the drooling, bulgy-eye, hand-waving, fresh-talking Berkeley Bowl shuffle, Dylan decided enough was enough.

We had to hike in from across the street, almost got hit several times in the parking lot, got accosted by two activists who wanted us to sign three petitions (which, of course, we did, because that's what we do) and one homeless man selling Street Spirit (which, of course, we bought, because that's what we do), and once inside were constantly bumped into and physically assaulted by patrons not unlike bargain shoppers on the day after Thanksgiving at Wal-Mart. Please people, observe the box of personal space that surrounds me at all times or suffer the daggers that shoot from my baby blues.

The Review: The produce was indeed fresh. There were indeed five varieties of avocados and a whole bin of spiky fruit in all shapes and sizes. We will indeed return if a recipe calls for Ceylon gooseberries, Chinese water spinach, or water convolvulus. But we bought grapes, strawberries, raspberries, bananas, celery, and (drumroll) Fuji apples. We also bought Best Foods mayonnaise, Gulden's spicy brown mustard, Starkist tuna fish, Colombo sandwich rolls, and, although we had our choice of about thirty-five different kinds of sake, Berkeley Farms milk. We passed on the overpriced Ocean Spray cranberry juice cocktail.

The Verdict: In the future, when we want to buy food and, at the same time, avoid physical contact with our fellow shoppers, we will go to Safeway. When we want to play yuppie, we?ll put on our designer hiking boots and go to Trader Joe's.