For reasons that aren’t quite clear, I was invited to take a
tour of the new Market Bistro by Price Chopper this week. I seriously doubt
what goes on at the Jon In Albany Blog has any influence on anything anyone
ever does and it shouldn’t. However, I try not to turn down invitations if I
can make an event. I missed what looked like a good one at The Cheese Traveler
last week. Anyhow, I arrived at the Latham Market Bistro just before 1:00 where
I was met by Mona Golub and brought back to what will be a teaching kitchen
where the only face I recognized was Steve Barnes of the Times Union. Steve and
I toured a Shop Rite together. We must be on the same super market mailing
list.
The visit started out with some quick presentations about
the concept. Mona Golub introduced Neil Golub who talked quite passionately
about the concept and how development began almost immediately after the Bon
Ton left the mall. The goal was to have most of America’s favorite foods made
to order in one place. He called it a “Microcosm of America’s food industry.” He
talked about the three deli’s the store has: Ben & Bill’s is a New York
City style deli, an Italian deli with cured meats and fresh pasta made daily,
traditional supermarket deli with cold cuts. The cheese section was influenced
by Zabaar’s. The store has a wellness program and “Quickcare” center with a
nurse practitioner. Neil also talked about new “Local” signage that was out on
the shelves in the store. He was clearly hands on with the stores concept and
design.
Next to speak was Jerry Golub. He talked about market
research that showed people went out to eat and then went grocery shopping.
This goal was to combine the two experiences in one Shop & Dine experience.
He touched on a few more things like the Chef’s Grill which will be a full
service restaurant in the store which also serves wine and beer. The restaurant
will feature items from other parts of the store like fresh pasta and sausages
from the Italian deli or corned beef for hash from Ben & Bill’s. He called
the store a “living, breathing lab” where new things could be tried. Some will
succeed, some will fail but the successes could be exported to the other
stores.
The final speaker before the tour began was Lewis Shaye, the
Vice President of Culinary Concepts for Price Chopper. He’s been working on
this project for almost 5 years. He said the theme they tried to carry out
through the Bistro was “Remarkable.” They wanted to do things that hadn’t been
done in a grocery store before. The other concept that carries though the
eateries is menu related. Each section has some specialties that are always on
the menu, some limited time offerings that will change as well as made to order
options. With that, the tour began. With that said, we left the cooking
classroom (which is pretty nice space) and headed out to the Bistro.
First on the tour was a Starbucks near the main entrance to
the store. Just adjacent to the Starbucks will be a few shelves of pastries and and ice cream station. But the Ice cream
station was the last stop, so we to a quick step to the side to see a soup
area.
Adjacent to the soup area is a Subtown, an East coast style
sub shop. I sampled the Italian mix and it was pretty good. Bread can make or
break a sub and this was pretty good. Half subs (about 7 inches) were in the $5
to $7 range, full 14 inch subs were about $9 to $10.
Next door to Subtown is a salad station. Salads ran from
about $6.50 to $9. One touch that was pointed out is that they are freezing the
salad serving plates so they are chilled when you get your salad.
I liked that the salads are tossed so everything is dressed.
On the other hand, I’m not sure I’d put $6 to $9 worth of salad in a bowl at a
traditional salad bar. These prices are in line with a shop like Panera, but at
Panera you have the option to get a smaller salad and half a sandwich. I’m sure
the salad sales will be watched and any issues will be addressed, but I think
some fine tuning might be needed.
Next up is Burritos. Like a Moe’s or Chipotle, you can get a
burrito bowl or quesadilla. Unlike Moe’s or Chipotle, they are offering some
different flavors like Buffalo chicken, BBQ, Italian and a Mediterranean. There’s
a kids meal option and they had tofu also. Most everything at this station was
just under $7 but could be upgraded to a meal package. We sampled a Buffalo
chicken quesadilla. It had the right Frank’s Red Hot flavor and some fresh
scallion added a little crunch but it wasn’t anything special. My daughter
Allison would love this station and want to come shopping if she knew about it.
Next up was the smokehouse. The actual smoker is over by the
meat counter. There’s brisket, ribs, chicken and pulled pork. There’s a bigger
spread of prices ($5 to $15) depending on what you order and how much you want.
There are also family meal options. We tried some brisket, a rib and the pulled
pork. I thought the brisket was a little over smoked, the rib was fall off the
bone tender and pretty tasty and this style of pulled pork isn’t for me. I go
for an Eastern North Carolina style with a vinegar sauce. This was more of a
barbecue sauce. People like that style. I’d probably like it more if that’s
what I had eaten first. The smokehouse chef gave Steve a taste of smoky caramelized
onions and it looked like Steve really liked them. I didn’t taste them.
Moving along…the burger stand. We sampled a pastrami hot
dog. A Hembold’s hot dog with mustard, onion and pastrami bits. The pastrami
bits reminded of the crumbled bacon found on southern Connecticut dogs with the
works. Personally, I think there are better hot dogs out there then Hembold’s. If
you wanted to keep it local-ish, I’d pick Hoffman’s out of Syracuse. Just my
two cents. The burger we tasted was well done but still good. It had store
cured and smoked bacon on it. I give bonus points for making their own bacon.
Burgers were around $6.50 but could be turned into a meal for around $10. I
think hot dogs were around $3 and there were kid’s meal options.
On to seafood. My picture of the menu board came out blurry.
It’s tough to eat, take notes like you are playing reporter and take pictures
on a phone. I know, tough problems. The seafood shop looked pretty standard
offering fried everything. We were given samples of the lobster roll. A full order
of the lobster roll will set you back almost $17. I thought it was OK, but
lobster rolls aren’t my thing. It was lightly dressed with mayo, but I have mayo
issues.
Switching sides of the aisle, there is sushi. They have a
new partner running the sushi stand and apparently business has doubled since
the change. If you are looking for advice on where to get sushi, I could
probably refer you to someone. For example, I’m not exactly sure what I tried,
but I tried two pieces. The first, I think was the crunchy dragon roll. I’d
never had any sushi with something crunchy on it. I thought it was pretty good.
Now that I’m looking at the menu, I see that has imitation crab in it and I
doubt I’d get it again. But they have a crunchy tempura shrimp roll and I’d
give that a try. I thought the crunchy topping was quite good. No idea if crunchy
sushi is blasphemy, but I liked it. I’m pretty sure my other bite was a smoked
salmon cream cheese wrap. It was good, but I didn’t like it as much as the
crunchy one. See, not exactly a connoisseur.
Behind the sushi section is the cheese shop. It looked like
they had some interesting choices and they are also interested in offering
local cheeses. The samples offered to us were a Rogue Creamery Smokey Blue
cheese (not my thing, didn’t like the smoke), a Cabot cloth bound cheddar
(pretty good) and a Nettle Meadow honey lavender fromage blanc goat cheese
(this was delicious). Just off to the side of the cheese shop was a growler
station. It looked cool. Can’t help but wish it was a bourbon station.
Alright, we’re turning the corner and starting to head back
towards the front of the store. The Italian deli offers up many kinds of
sausage. Pork, lamb, duck, turkey in various styles ranging in price from $2.79
to $5.99 a pound. They also have many kinds of fresh pasta ranging in price
from $5.99 to $6.99 a pound. They also have a lot of salami and cured meats you
would expect in an Italian deli too. We tried a two pasta dishes that were just
so-so. I believe they would have been much better prepared and served right
away. It has to be tough to prepare fresh pasta for a walking tour that will
just suddenly show up.
Still reading? They got an olive oil station where you can
try a bunch of oils – some straight, others are infused – and balsamic vinegar
too. Twelve ounce bottles go between $7 and $15 depending on your choice. There
was a good looking olive bar too.
Then you have a regular deli with lunch meats and some
prepared items. The regular deli is offering Chef’s meals for $6 which are a
main and two sides.
Ben and Bill’s is the next deli. The deli which is heavily
influence by the legendary Joe’s (I never got the chance to eat there, but I
have heard many people miss it) still features meats from Old World Provisions.
Prepared properly, an Old World Provisions pastrami sandwich is heaven. Most deli sandwiches are $6.50 for a half and
$9.50 for a whole. Your cardiologist probably would recommend the half, especially
if you are going to try the potato pancake. That’s no low fat pancake.Lots of smoke fish too.
This side of the aisle ends with the Stone Fired Pizza shop.
I’d argue this is an area that requires immediate attention, but I’m probably
not their typical pizza customer. First, I have no idea what Stone Fired is. I
looked it up online and found a few restaurants with a similar name. It looks
like pizza is cooked in a regular oven. Maybe the oven has a stone floor. From
what I could see of the oven, it looked like it was set to 550 degrees which in
my opinion is too cold. You’ve got a brand spanking new hot rod pizza oven and
it is being used by a few kids that are running it like a home oven. Not the
kids fault though, they need training.
And look at this pizza.
Where’s the rim? I'm going to stop beating it up. The picture says enough. If they are looking to make a quality
pizza, a consultant is needed.
Coming down off my high horse, we go to the Chef’s grill
back at the entrance to the Bistro section. This will be the full service, 50
seat restaurant that will serve breakfast, lunch and dinner. The idea is to
sample from all of the stands. For example, showcasing the fresh pasta and
sausage from the Italian market. It’s ambitious and I’m curious to see how it
does. They plan to open it by the 1st of the month.
The last stop was back to the ice cream shop which features
Perry’s and Hagen Das ice creams. They make their own hot fudge and whipped
cream and both are pretty good. A sundae is $569. We also tried a strawberry
shake, which was also good. A 16 oz. shake is $4.60.
A few of us strangled behind and were shown the smoker back
in the meat section. It’s not out on display because there isn’t much to see. If
you’re interested, it’s the largest smoke Southern Pride makes. Just to the
side of the smoker, I noticed a dry aging chamber. I’ve seen dry aged beef for
sale, but don’t recall ever seeing a market like Price Chopper doing the dry aging
themselves. I thought that was impressive.
There’s a really big natural and organic section – a little
more than one entire aisle, both sides. And in that section, there is a pretty
large Gluten Free area with some gluten free breads made in Saratoga.
There’s a smaller version of the Westgate Price Chopper’s
international aisle and local tags on the shelves next to the products. They
are currently at 520 “Local” products with local being taken to mean within 400
miles of the store. Turns out that we make a lot of tomato sauce within 400
miles of Latham.
I don’t know if this store will change my shopping habits. I
tend to hit a few grocery stores a week. Sometimes for price, but mostly
because the stores carry different things. I enjoyed the tour and in the spirit
of Festivus, I took some time to air my two biggest Price Chopper grievances.
The first is because I’m cheap. On sale, a bottle of Polar
seltzer is $1 at Price Chopper. The regular price at Hannaford is $0.85 and it
goes on sale for $0.79. I have a major Ruby Red Grapefuit flavored seltzer
problem.
Grievance #2: All of the shrimp for sale in Price Chopper
have more ingredients than just “shrimp.” The all have
sodium-phos-nitra-blah-blah-blah in them. If you sold just shrimp, maybe I’d
try some. Preferably from the US.
After I aired my grievances, we went back to the cooking
school room for the feats of strength.
Well, really we just shook hands and I left. But I left with
this bag of goodies. Food blogger swag.
So if you made it all the way to the end of this, or at
least scrolled down to the end, leave a comment letting me know if you plan to
check out the new Bistro Market. I’ll number the comments, that random.org will
pick a number and then I’ll make arrangements to get you the bag of goodies
less the bread (it would be green by the time you get it). Up for grabs is a reusable tote, a bottle of sparkling cranberry/raspberry water, a jar of Thai chili
roasted garlic, some cheese with espresso in it, a lemon infused olive
oil, tortilla chips and a gift card of an unknown amount. There's also a
series of coupons for $2 off growlers every week, but you'll miss the
first week. I’ll close the
contest on Saturday, March 1st at midnight. Please be in or willing to travel to the Albany area to get the bag o' swag. Hopefully, I'll get at least one comment...not sure though. If you made it this far, your odds are pretty good.
