Fresh and Easy - That's My Style (or, "Tesco, Can You Hear Me?")

I love Fresh and Easy. That's what my friend Jim told me last September when a Fresh and Easy supermarket opened up in Yucaipa, where he lives. After visiting today, I am of the same opinion: I love the place.

I was early meeting him for lunch (Tokyo Sushi for a super-filling meal), so I decided to visit Fresh and Easy. As I've mentioned in the past, F&E is owned and operated by the UK-based Tesco Supermarket chain. Their mission: to open up supermarkets in urban places, especially the inner cities. Yucaipa is not the inner city. It's about as rural and rednecky as you could ever hope for (besides, maybe, Banning). So why open up a fresh and fun Fresh and Easy store right across from Yucaipa's "master-planned golf course community" (I'm not kidding), now covered in all the ooze and goo that is the uber-bursted housing bubble? Who cares why? It's awesome!!!

The one time I went into a Tesco sandwiched in between compact buildings in a tiny corner of St. John's Wood in London, I saw the same crispness and efficiency of the layout. Like Tesco, Fresh and Easy prides itself on higher quality at an affordable price. The prices were slightly higher than those at Trader Joe's (with more fresh produce and other stuff you would find in a supermarket but not at Trader Joe's), and much lower than those at Whole Paycheck Foods.

They also have a free sample section with several different free samples, just waiting to be eaten. Their hash browns and homemade macaroni salad were pretty tasty - not the best, but definitely good. And employee enthusiasm is not to be taken lightly. The woman manning the free sample section insisted on giving me a ten-minute tour of the place when I told her that I had never before been. She told me about how:

• this location was the first in the Inland Empire that had been built for F&E instead of just moving into a pre-existing location. You can tell by the skylights, which are put in to save on energy.
• everybody who comes in zeroes in on the "Day-Old / Up to 50% Off" section, by the beer (Oh GOD, do I miss living in a state that allows supermarkets to sell alcohol!). I bought lemon bars that were about 25% lower than their normal cost.
• the place prides itself on natural ingredients, without the ridiculous markup that the sometimes-valid, sometimes-dubious "ORGANIC" label brings.
• it's a place that a lot of people come into just to buy something quick and cheap and tasty.
• most of its wares are shipped to their Moreno Valley warehouse and then distributed to all the area F&E's, thereby reducing carbon emissions from the trucks.
  

She showed a zeal for the place that lay somewhere between "Scientologist" and "Chick-Fil-Aniac" on the enthusiasm scale (that is, quite high). But while it may be easy to poke fun, I can understand her enthusiasm. It is a lovely place, and many of the items sold at F&E are indeed F&E brand items, packaged in much the same way that Tesco items are packaged.

I did buy some items. I went for the aforementioned lemon bars for a mere £1.40 $2.25. Along with those, I got a bottle of mint-flavored water for 60 cents. They also have cucumber, strawberry and (get this) coconut. Total after tax: about three bucks.

A few snacky things from Tesco, American-Style

Honestly, I do see myself going there next Tuesday (the day before I fly back home), buying a few supplies, and shipping them back to Baltimore. When did I last do that? Oh yeah, it was about 12 years ago, after I had moved to California and found this great place called "Trader Joe's" that had yet to move into the Baltimore area. Then it was for family. This time, it's mine! (Yes, and theirs, too.) Maybe Tesco will plop a few Fresh and Easy's somewhere in Baltimore someday?

Fresh & Easy (in SoCal) - a Tesco Creation

Just talking to my friend Jim in Yucaipa, CA - even as I write this - and he stopped at the brand new Fresh and Easy supermarket. He LOVES this place, and raves about the cilantro dressing, the shrimp shumai - really fresh as he puts it - and the fresher (though pricier) udon. But he's telling me to avoid the coconut water. Why am I talking about a nice new grocery chain on the other end of the country? Well, the cool thing about F&E, owned and operated by UK grocery chain Tesco, is that is tapping not just into the ritzy areas (such as Burbank) but the rural areas (several in the eastern Inland Empire) and the inner cities where few if any grocery stores ever open (one is open in Compton, for example). So far, F&E is only in Cali, Arizona and Nevada, but like Trader Joe's they are planning to spread across the country.

I just have to fly six hours west to get to it. At least now it's not an international flight!

Rainy Day in Yucaipa

For a morning in late May, the Inland Empire (California, just to clear things up) was pretty clammy. And Einstein here, who has taught everyone from children to adults in his day job, forgot to bring a hat or umbrella to shield himself from the cold, cold rain. It was almost like Amsterdam in March, only 30 degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer.

That still did not stop me from walking the vast expense of Yucaipa Blvd, which I have never done. Not counting my friend's house (where I am staying), I walked - solely because I felt like it - from Lupita's Mexican Fast Food to the Green Valley Produce Market.

I lived for a few years near Yucaipa, so I am a bit more familiar with it than most Bawlamorons. But I have never been to Lupita's. It's just one of those places you pass by often but never go into. It's not an ominous place. It's just one of those places you look at and you think "Eh, some other time I guess. Oooh, enchiladas up ahead!" even though this place probably has 'em too.

Lupita's is cheery and bright inside, even at 9:00 in the morning - and I wasn't sure what they would have available to order this early. Their menu is the standard yet expansive (not expensive, but expansive) selection of Mexican offerings: huaraches, tacos, tamales, tostadas, ceviche, etc., made of fish, pork, carne asada, lengua, chicken, shrimp, everything. Lupita's also offers a burger combo. Not that you can't find burgers in Mexico, because, believe me, you can. It's quite easy to find lunch carts on the main streets of most cities selling not just tacos but hot dogs and burgers. I got one in Morelia in 2000 that had shredded carrot on it. An odd choice on my part, I know, for only 4 pesos ($4 - they use the dollar sign, too). At the time it went for, oh, 50 cents US. But I'm getting off track here.

I hemmed and hawed and finally ordered two tamales ($1.40 each) - one pork in green sauce, one jalapeño and cheese in red sauce.

The jalapeño and cheese...

...and the pork tamale.

I loved the latter one and saved some of it for later. The pork in the other one was a little dry but the tamale overall was still pretty good. Both tamales were filled with moist and flavorful masa filling wrapped around their star ingredients, but the masa itself was the star, I think. The red sauce was sharp, tangy and tomato-ey, a little spicy, and very good. The green sauce was a spicy tomatillo sauce, again tasty. Along with those I got a refreshing cup of horchata (about $1) and a Mexican candy (another $1), which tasted like brown sugar fudge but was cookie shaped. Total cost for everything: about $5.50 (eat that, Manchu Wok).

After enduring 2.6 miles of the rain, a little hail, sunshine and a newspaper headline in the LA Times breaking the news that American Airlines is now going to charge you $15 just to check one piece of luggage (!), I stopped by the Green Valley Produce, a popular farmer's market in Yucaipa that I frequented when I lived in nearby Redlands. It provides Yucaipa's easiest access to the Inland's freshest produce. There is a wide selection of fresh fruits, vegetables and herbs, from fresh garlic (35 cents a head or 75 cents for 5, grown just up the 10 Freeway) and Coachella sweet white corn (4 for $1) to Haas avocados (didn't catch the price) and peaches ($1.49 per pound), to shrink-wrapped packages of flax seeds, honey-dipped pineapple slices, sugar and hot chili mango and a wide assortment of nuts. Bread, including that "rye bread that they love back East" and sourdough, and a refrigerator case with locally farmed and produced fresh eggs, milk and cheese are also on hand.

I bought a bag of peaches for Jim, whom I'm staying with, for $2.25, and walked back to his office, which was on the way.

Vacation Over

Sadly, my vacation is done. **SIGH** The next time I post anything I'll be back in the comfort of my home in Bawlmer. But I have one or two things left to write about:

Papaya Bay of Yucaipa

Jim took me to this Thai restaurant, Papaya Bay, in this remote, dusty little Yucaipa strip mall. Note that this city isn't very big to begin with, but hey, it's the desert, so 40,000 people can live on a patch of land much bigger than they need anyway. My jaw dropped when I walked in; the place is gorgeous, with all this beautiful woodwork and even a fancy table and chairs when you walk in, all ornate Thai woodworking.

The food was just as good, and as usual we ordered too much of it. For starters we ordered some egg rolls - crispy and with a sweet and sour sauce - and some puff pastry sort of thing that looked like a tiny empanada, but with curry and potatoes in it - still done up in Thai style. This latter one came with a sweet vinegary sauce with little chopped-up red onions and cucumbers in it.

Then our soup came out - tom kha gai, which I have never received as a complimentary part of my meal before (and so good). Next was the mains course. Mine was panang curry chicken, which I've never had before. Smooth and coconutty (coconut milk, not coconut bits), a little hot. It looked more like a stew than anything else, and came with a large mound of white rice. It also came with a little salad that I didn't bother with.

Total price for two: about $38.

Café Sevilla of Riverside

It seems to have become a tradition, our going to Café Sevilla once during every trip out here. We went in April and we did it again. Just a note of advice (heads up, Danielle, if you make it out this far; you'll be in LA by the time you read this): if you are out in Riverside, go there on a Wednesday night. They have tapas platters, and they are all half price. We got $50 worth of tapas for $25 easily, not even that. Plus, try their sangarita. It's their claim of "Spain meets Mexico!" It's just a margarita mixed with sangría, and put in a standard short glass with sugar instead of salt around the rim. Tasty. Total was about $60.

And that's it. I'm off to the local Vons (a Safeway subsidiary - note how alike their websites look) or Stater Bros for something to eat on the plane. I could just get something between connections in Phoenix, but I won't have enough time and it probably won't be any good anyway.

Day in the Desert: Yucaipa to Palm Springs

Tokyo Restaurant in Yucaipa

Yesterday Jim and I went for some great sashimi and sushi in Yucaipa, a smallish city known more for its dustiness than its sushi. Sitting down at the Tokyo Restaurant, we ordered lots of tasty nibbles, including a plate of Japanese mackerel sashimi, each piece separated by a paper-thin lemon wedge. There was more than the waitress said there'd be. But my favorite thing had to be their "Screaming Orgasm" (a name like that in conservative little Yucaipa could be scandalous enough). Simply put, it's albacore tuna sashimi piled on top of the radish "noodles" and greens that usually come with sashimi, and smothered in their "screaming orgasm" sauce - mayo and small fish eggs, with a little spiciness and some salmon-y color. I almost screamed, yes it was that tasty. And it made the usually bland and flavorless "noodles" taste almost spaghetti-like. I finished half of them. Note, however, that their miso soup is pretty forgettable.

Russell Wright: Living with Good Design

I made my way to Palm Springs and found, to my dismay, pretty much half the town was shut down! It soon dawned on me why: this is the summer, stupid! There are no tourists here, because it regularly gets up to 115 degrees in the day (August is PS's hottest month by far). One thing that was open was the Palm Springs Art Museum, formerly the Palm Springs Desert Museum. It's removed all of its natural history and anthropology exhibits (sending them elsewhere) and replaced them with more art.

One traveling exhibition hosted by the museum right now is the fascinating exhibition of mid-20th century designer Russell Wright's furniture, dishes and eating utensils. Russell Wright: Living with Good Design put on display objects that I didn't think I'd see in an art museum for a few decades yet: utensils that our parents, maybe even some of us have used throughout our lives. But instead of putting them on display purely as recontextualized art, they were displayed as both art and history: we saw these things as they were meant to be used or displayed. Very cool. And that Iroquois translucent china? Wow.

See's Candies

After a little thrift store shopping at the local Revivals (proceeds go to benefit the Desert AIDS Project, and they have some really neat stuff, too), I finally stopped for a snack at that California institution known as See's Candies. Because most of my family is dieting and forbidding themselves from having fattening, delicious, sugary chocolates - and because I already got them some gifts they probably shouldn't be eating - I got half a pound of candies for myself and friends here (yeah, that's it, my friends). Some of the tasty buttercreams that I bought (I am a buttercreamaholic) were vanilla, brown sugar, toffee and apricot. Too bad they melted together in the car, so I had to freeze them and then thaw them out in the fridge. Should make for some interesting eating.

Hunters Video Bar of Palm Springs

Like San Francisco, Palm Springs has a very vocal and vibrant gay community and nightlife. I explored it, as I have before, with a Guinness at Hunters, a local institution with massive screens showing (last night anyway) Beyoncé, Shakira and Norah Jones (funny, I always think of them at the same time, don't you?). In the gay-specific strip on Arenas Road, it's one of the brighter bars, and one of the ones I like more in that area. Of course, there are many other gay and straight bars all over Palm Springs and nearby Cathedral City (their leather-lovin' Barracks Bar has a popular happy hour).

Las Casuelas - ¿Otra Vez?

I went to Las Casuelas again. Yes, I went there the last time I visited PS. But this time, with so fewer people in town and such smaller crowds - and with so fewer options because, y'know, everything was closed - I went back. Only this time, for a change of pace, I stopped in their much bigger Terraza location up the street from the smaller one that's a favorite with the locals. Here I got a cool, crisp Dos Equis beer in a very tall glass to wash down my tortilla chips and salsa. Then came the two-item combo that I ordered: a mild chili relleno filled with, it seemed, mozzarella (or at least its Mexican equivalent) and covered in delicious breading and melted cheese, and a large pork tamale. All that with rice and Oaxaca-style beans (just whole black beans cooked with onion and cumin; I couldn't really taste the onion). Total price for this delicious food: $18. I left a $4 tip.

Other photos -

Even Lucy thought it was hot - must be why she's sitting near the sprinklers.


Just resting? Or are Duane Hanson's Old Couple even real?

Maybe they'd be more comfortable in these swell furnishings by Russell Wright!

FOOL, please!

Oh it IS, is it?

If too blurry, this reads:
THIS RYE: a favorite with people FROM BACK EAST

In one fell swoop, a natural bread maker out of Palm Springs lumps all us "Back-Easterners" from Maine to Mississippi together as "those people." A little blurry but still funny. Photo taken at a local produce market in Yucaipa.