Matt and I went to the Fairway in Red Hook yesterday for the first time. Dear lord, this is what a supermarket is supposed to be. It’s a gourmand’s wet dream. They have practically everything you want or need (well, except for the $18 pepper, I checked). Regular and organic and health foods in one building. It’s like a less pretentious, somewhat more middle class version of Whole Foods.

I only have four complaints. The first is that it’s designed as a maze: You are forced to walk through the entire store (like Stew Leonard’s, minus the animatronics), so it makes it really hard just to pop in and just buy some milk and bread. Secondly, you need a car to go there. The third is that the produce wasn’t as fresh as you’d think. Fourth, is that even despite the three previous qualms, Fairway is too awesome. Too awesome means that I will want to go there all the time to buy stuff that I don’t really need. Pretty soon I’ll end up like Jeffrey Steingarten or Hedonism-Bot (as seen above, being smothered in chocolate). I’ll be smacking my lips loudly and wheezing while I eat.

Anyway, here’s a brief list of awesomeness I found:

• Freshly made pumpkin gnocchi
• Two mega-lobster-saurus’ at $12/lb
• Organic hypo-allergenic free-range cruelty-free sustainable flax-based biodegradable condoms (okay, this one I made up)
• Foie gras
• Jiffy Pop
• Rick’s Picks
• About twenty different kinds of loose olives for $6/lb
• Eight or ten different Fairway brand olive oils that you could test out with baguette slices
• An entire skinned goat sitting in the butcher’s case - with the head still on
• And the thing-de-resistance:

Goose fat! For $9 a jar!

So I say fuck Whole Foods coming to Brooklyn. Fairway doesn’t need gimmicks like conveyer belt sushi and a “shower” in the cheese department.