Cornucopia: This column doesn’t really have a Thanksgiving theme, except for the one of abundance. Two new retailers have recently opened up in the Athens area, The Fresh Market out of Greensboro, NC—and now in the Beechwood Shopping Center filling the former Borders space—and, at the intersection of Highways 78 and 53, Stripling’s General Store, a smaller chain that has only four locations and started in Warwick, GA.
On the surface, apart from their both selling food, they have little in common. The Fresh Market aims its sights on the yupster foodie crowd, with an interior designed to mimic a European-style grocer (more open, fewer aisles), while Stripling’s is deliberately countrified, but both make use of the same kind of nostalgia, the sense that we’re doing something wrong in how we retail food and have moved away from our roots. Neither is 100 percent genuine about this mission. It’s a smart way to find your market, and both stores play up their authenticity. Stripling’s focuses on it a bit more but was started 45 years ago, which lends it more credibility.
Regardless of whether this tactic rubs you the wrong way (it may depend on your mood), there are good and different reasons to go to both of them. None of those reasons include a lack of dollars in your wallet. The Fresh Market is less expensive than you may think, but compared to Trader Joe’s, perhaps its most comparable competitor in the area, it’s not cheap. Stripling’s is surprisingly pricey. A jar of pickled asparagus is simple, well-executed, nicely packaged and not small, but $9 is rather a lot to swallow, especially when it sits only a few feet from Athens’ own Phickles, which will save you a few bucks a pop.
Stripling’s made its name on sausage and other meats, and its motto is “You never sausage a place.†You can get it fresh or frozen, raw or smoked, loose or linked and in a variety of flavors. The frozen stuff lines the leftmost wall, and a large butcher’s counter at the back of the store deals out the fresh meats as well as cheeses. I grabbed some of the smoked stuff, and while it’s a bit softer than I’d like ideally, it’s also well-seasoned, not short on fat (that’s a good thing) and flavorful, a generally impressive product. Stripling’s gets its hoop cheese from Wisconsin, in both red (mild) and black (sharp) wax coatings, and the stuff is available in chunks priced at impulse-buy levels. It’s got a warmth and saltiness to it that you don’t find in most commercial products and is justifiably touted.
The tomatillo salsa I tried was a little weird, but maybe the store shouldn’t venture too far from its professionally Southern image. The pork jerky is an interesting option, available copiously by both entrances, and the cashew brittle is fine but not stellar. The store retails a wider range of groceries than I expected, with some fresh produce and plenty of the stuff (Tide, Heinz ketchup, Coca-Cola, Doritos) you’d find in most other establishments. It also aims at tailgaters, with Georgia-emblazoned coolers, an ice dispensary and a gas station all available.
The Fresh Market is famed for its free-sample days, which you probably cannot manage to eat lunch from but offer a lot of tidbits. Recently, it had one to demonstrate its full line of Thanksgiving options, from ham (good) and turkey (fine) to fresh-ish cranberry sauce (too sweet), roasted carrots and pumpkin pie (no more impressive than Kroger). What’s nice about the store is its meat counter, which sells Nueske’s bacon, lamb, veal, antibiotic-free chicken and more. In the deli, you can buy pâté de campagne by the pound, and there are some nice cheeses. Snacks are available in abundance, and the produce section has some pretty stuff.
The store has a wide variety of prepared foods, and although you could certainly pick up lunch there were you aiming to do some grocery shopping on your lunch hour or if you worked in the area, heading to the Beechwood area between 11:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m. guarantees a fairly lengthy and stress-filled excursion. There’s premade sushi with brown rice, salads, quiche, noodle bowls and so on. The deli counter will make you a sandwich to order on the market’s own bread, although the pimento cheese that it advertised as a signature item is thin and sweet, two fairly negative attributes. The best option, apart from buying your own ingredients and making your own food, is the soup. Both a Thai red curry soup and a Hungarian mushroom soup were solid contenders, offering something new, with fresh-tasting ingredients.
The Fresh Market is open 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. except for Sundays, when it’s open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Stripling’s is open 6 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 to 6 p.m. Sunday. Both stores take credit cards and sell beer and wine. Stripling’s also sells cigarettes.
What Up?: Steak ‘n Shake is open on West Broad, near Alps. Dirty Birds will open Nov. 24 on Washington Street downtown.
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