High Street: Wholefoods Temple in Kensington

This is THE ART of Gourmet Shopping and thus it deserves a post on this blog. I know Wholefoods back from The States, where its is the kind of bigger, more corporate brother of Trader Joe's. Granted, most of the food is organic in here, but you have to close one eye on the carbon food print, since it imports a lot from around the world. The trade off is: you will find EVERYTHING, no matter how sophisticated of a home meal you want to cook.

Where in London can you get delicious rarities such plaintains from Costa Rica and fresh Tamarind from Thailand in the same supermarket, instead of trawling different markets from Green Street to North End Road? Exotic goods aside, a lot of the produce is local and spanking fresh, and I have never seen so much choice of salads on a single shelf, well it is 50 feet long!

Basically, this temple of monumental proportions devotes the size of a Tesco Local each to distinct areas such like fish, herbs, nuts, coffee, and easily the size of a Tesco Centre for cheese, wine and staple food. Oh, the wine list...is extensive and covers all our favourites from Casa Lapostolle (Chile) to Rosenblum (California) and you can even (re-) fill your own bottle of organic Spanish wine for £5.

You don't want to just do the usual after-work-stressed-pressing-for-speed go shopping there, you want to spend time on this whole experience; explore, wander, wonder, get lost, find new ways to Rome (I seriously thought about their approach to feasting) and simply be carried away by whatever your 'weakness' is - one thing is for sure, it is measured in calories. According to Meghan, I said "we need to go" apparently a number of times - as a means for self protection against being skint in the first week of a months and blowing-up to Peter Griffin size from the TV series Family Guy by the last of it.

We ended up with a few samples and tasters for a tenner and comparing the prices to Tesco and Planet Organic, well it is somewhat inbetween, depending on your taste buds.