Food for Thought

Originally sent to subscribers on May 15, 2026.

From my apartment window, I can see three liquor stores, two grocery stores, and a CVS that sells snacks. I can reach two more grocery stores within a five-minute walk—three if I'm starving—and there’s a Whole Foods ten minutes away. Two more grocery stores are set to open on my street this year. There was a store in my building, but it moved out years ago. So I’m basically in a food desert.

Of all these options, my favorite grocery store is another grocery store entirely—one that delivers to my door. It kinda makes me feel like the hot girl a the bar. You expect me to come to you? Ha! I'll sit here with my Manhattan—ingredients delivered, thank you very much—and wait for you to come to me. Sometimes they don't have the exact product or the delivery window I need, so I have to walk all the way across the street to the Food Emporium. After all, a girl's gotta eat.

From the outside, it doesn't look like much. There are no windows, no signage. There are no produce stands on the sidewalk to lure people in or, as is more likely the case, provide things for them to steal. And you have to fight to get in and out, as either the IN or the OUT door is usually broken. If you walk by fast enough, you might mistake it for a prison.

The Food Emporium doesn't sell sundries or provisions like the other fancier stores. They keep it simple: food. I always want to tell the sundries and provisions places to chill out. We're not on the Oregon Trail. We're in a strip mall in New Jersey! There's a chain of cafés nearby called Daily Provisions. Whenever I'm there I feel like I should order hardtack and salt beef. "I'm feeling peckish," I want to tell the waiter. "How's your pemmican?"

The Food Emporium occupies most of the ground floor of Manhattan West, a large residential complex built in the late ’70s. It was originally planned for upper-middle-class residents, but when the city-backed funding came up short, Uncle Sam got involved and the building became subsidized housing for performing artists—including Tennessee Williams, Timothée Chalamet before he earned the accent above the e, and jazz musicians Dexter Gordon, Woody Shaw, and Mike LeDonne, no relation. The building isn't glamorous, but it's filled with excellent stuff.

And so is the Food Emporium! Their produce selection is mostly organic, varied, and expensive. Their baguette is way better than the local bakery up the street. And their cheese selection is huge—coffee-rubbed goat? Are you kidding me?!They have Wagyu beef, wild boar saucisson sec, and three kinds of black sesame seeds—which in this political climate I feel like I should capitalize. The outside may look like it needs a power wash, but inside, someone knows what they're doing.

I’d like to be more like the Food Emporium.

Not in every way. I don't want people to walk past me and wonder whether I'm open. I don't need them to have to fight their way in. I don't want to give off a fluorescent glow that gives you the sad and jaundiced look emo teens would kill [themselves] for, or emit a chemical smell that makes you think I'm hiding something terrible. But I like the idea of being better on the inside than the outside.

This isn't a cry for help. I'll still keep the outside clean and I'm not letting myself go. I'll remain fit-adjacent, showered, shaved from the neck down, and presentable. I'll keep up with the daily maintenance, but I have no interest in messing with the original architecture. I'm not going to replaster the facade just because it some pockmarks from its hormonal teenage years or replace the awnings because they've started to turn thinned and turned gray. The wear and tear is what makes the Food Emporium the Food Emporium and not another Whole Foods. Who would you rather sit next to at a dinner party, the 20-something who recites organic poetry, or the rusty eccentric who maybe forgot deodorant but at least has some character?

A few chalk outlines, sure, but also character. And that’s what I want my inner manager to curate. I want my aisles lined with patience, discipline, courage, writing super on-the-nose newsletters like this, and yes, unexpected foie gras and crackers with dried cranberries.

I want to be the kind of grocery store where people are pleasantly surprised, mildly confused, and uncomfortably intrigued by that fancy new cheese.

Just don't check the expiration date.