One of the ben­e­fits (and draw­backs) of mov­ing is find­ing your [shop­ping] way in your new city.  Being that I live at the edge of Man­ayunk, a SoHo-esque neigh­bor­hood in Philadel­phia, I’m not *that* close to my favorite happy place, the Ital­ian Mar­ket.  As a mat­ter of fact, while the GPS will tell me I’m 20 min. away by car from 9th street, real­ity is with traf­fic on the 76, it’s more like 40 min. which means if I am to do any major food shop­ping at the Ital­ian Mar­ket, well I bet­ter pack up that cooler!  I’m always so para­noid about things spoil­ing, espe­cially after get­ting sick one too many times dur­ing my early cook­ing career.  And park­ing is always an issue.

So, as I have this issue where I need a stocked pantry to sleep at night, gro­cery shop­ping was on the agenda.  I’m used to all things Fresh Mar­ket & Pub­lix being so close by like it was in Alta­monte.  How­ever, now that I’m here in the big city, my options are lim­ited.  The Whole Pay­chex isn’t open yet in Ply­mouth Meet­ing (and at the rate they are going, it might be Jan­u­ary before they are open).  Trader Joes is in Ard­more – another 20 min. or so away – and will be treach­er­ous come win­ter.  There is a ShopRite 3 mi. away in Rox­bor­ough – how­ever, as a Philly native told me “Don’t EVEN go there – it’s gross!”  Down the street is a Super­Fresh but that also had its draw­backs as some of the food isn’t so “Super­Fresh”  The deli expects ALL of your orders at once, not just order one thing and think about what else you need.  And if you expect the clerks to help bag your gro­ceries, for­get it – you’ll get the blank stare like “Huh/Wha?”  It was inter­est­ing to say the least.  And stay away from the rotis­serie chicken – because of a cou­ple bad expe­ri­ences, I’ll be roast­ing my own chicken from hereon out thankyouverymuch!

You can imag­ine my sur­prise when I decided on a whim to try Gen­uardis which is about 10 min. away from Super­Fresh and can I say “WOW!”  I should have known that it was call­ing my name when I was greeted by a Star­bucks stand as I entered the store.  Every­one there is super friendly.  They have some phe­nom­e­nal home­made soups that keep well and have been a life­saver this week as I’ve been nurs­ing a cold and slavin’ over a hot stove hasn’t been an option lately.  The pro­duce – crisp and fresh.  The butcher shop is on point – and their stuffed mush­rooms – I. Die.  And when I am look­ing for some gourmet ingre­di­ents, HELLO!  They have it.  Case in point – grape­seed oil.  I paid a for­tune for a small bot­tle in a culi­nary store who will remain name­less and found a much big­ger bot­tle by the SAME maker for CHEAP!  I will never make that mis­take again.  Their prices are com­pet­i­tive and, remem­ber, you get what you pay for.  No longer will apples go bad within a day or two of bring­ing them home like I encoun­tered at that other store.  All in all, I think this is a good way to start my culi­nary adven­ture here in Philly…