Dining at the Market
Not too long ago--we probably all remember when--people went to a grocery store to buy the ingredients for their meals, then went home and cooked. Somewhere along the way-maybe it started with canned soups and cake mixes, then progressed to frozen dinners and readi-mixes-- everything changed. Grocery stories evolved into super-markets and the foods you used to buy to cook were already cooked for you. Counters that once offered sliced meats, potato salads and slaw added fancier dishes, chicken and pasta salads, maybe even an entree or two.
Next came rotisserie chickens and prepared quiches, lasagnas and chicken pot pies ready for the oven and, finally (at least up to now) full-blown catering and prepared meals ready to be plated and taken home or eaten right there in the market with its tables and booths, plastic dishes and utensils, microwaves for whatever needs warming, maybe even a bottle of beer or a glass of wine to go with the meal.
No longer merely the source of ingredients, markets now provide the meals, complete with food courts and/or mini restaurants and a full range of prepared staple soups, salads and basics-meat, vegetables, starches, desserts-along with a variety of ethnic offerings-think quesadillas, empanadas, tofu korma, General Tsao's chicken.
There's a reason for this rambling introduction. If our markets (super and otherwise) are going to take on the role of food court, restaurant, eat-in and carry-out, maybe they should get the same kind of scrutiny. What's good and what's not? Is it good value? Are you better off eating in or out? And whatever happened to The Joy of Cooking?
But reviewing market food has built-in challenges. Where to start and how to do it? How to assess a food target that changes every day (hopefully) and (probably) suffers from being taken home and re-heated, food that was designed to satisfy all tastes (easy on the seasonings) yet offend none. How much do you need to sample for a fair assessment? And how many market food courts can one reasonably visit, anyway?
So, market food reviewing may be a long, drawn-out process that needs lots of input from the outside. Yours. Which do you like? Favorite dishes? Convenience-the one on the way home-or is any place worth a special trip?
Balducchi's in McLean is handy for a start, partly because the cooked and ready-to-cook food is contained in only a few counters and cases and you can ask, casually of course, what others recommend as you peruse the contents.
This not-very-scientific sampling has led to recommendations for the grilled salmon and the grilled chicken breasts, the crab cakes, the quesadillas, the stuffed acorn squash, the roasted vegetables, the sauteed spinach and the string beans. London broil got a mixed response: one thought it was pretty good, another that it was cardboardy and a third that it was adequate. The meatloaf was great, if you like meatloaf, but it was cheap. The chili seems to have a regular following, so do the quiche Lorraine and lasagna in the take-it-home-to-heat section.
From personal experience, the rotisserie chickens have always been tender and juicy and the French onion soup excellent, as long as you skim the fat and garnish with cheese, and the grilled salmon and chicken breasts almost, but not quite, as good as home-cooked. But it is quick and easy and, after a long day, maybe that's the trade-off.