My Local Pub is a Whole Foods

I wish this was a joke, but it isn’t.

A few months ago, a Whole Foods opened ‘across the street’ (read: a ten minute walk along a six-lane highway) from my office.

To non-Angelenos, the opening of a supermarket might not be cause for celebration, but here in Angel-on-Sea it’s a big deal.

I missed both the “preview evening” & “Grand Opening” (organic C02-free fireworks! Non-threatening 21-gun-salute! Sustainable ticker-tape parade etc), but I was around for the formal first day of business.

I went in pursuit of a decent sandwich and possibly a cup of coffee, but it became apparent that my expectation levels had been set far too low.

Californians descend on a newly-opened Whole Foods like ecstatic pilgrims reaching the end of the long voyage to Santiago de Compostela, finally admitted into the inner sanctum full of vials of Jesus’ toenails and locks of his beard hair, rather than a shop full of lychee-flavoured candy floss and over-priced artisanal pickles.

The formal descriptor for the moment where an Angeleno enters a new Whole Foods for the first time is called a ‘Organigasm’, and I saw many happy shoppers enjoying moments of food-induced climax during my trip there.

The shop includes a pub called (sigh) The Astro Bar, and so I find myself in the bizarre situation where the nearest place within walking distance of work that I can go for a pint is a Whole Foods.

I am powerless to resist, and so I expect that I’ll eventually give in and end up in there every Friday lunchtime grumbling over a pint of gluten-free organic pumpkin craft beer and packet of free-range low-sodium Honduran pork scratchings, wishing I was in a grubby pub with peeling wallpaper somewhere in Soho.