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When Grocery Stores Attack (Your Wallet)
by Michael Anderson and Anthony Lowenberg
A wise man once said there comes a time in a man’s life when he has to pay $18 for a chicken quesadilla, a dollop of guacamole, a bag of potato chips and a Diet Sprite. Now that wise man is broke and he's looking for some payback! This month we review Dallas City Market, which is located near the corner of Lovers Lane and the Tollway in Dallas. DCM, as the locals don’t call it, makes Eatzi's look like a Piggly Wiggly. DCM has it all: free samples, purdy looking rosemary-encrusted meat/fish/tofu/vegetables, $4.00 soda made with water distilled from the tears of an obscure sect of monks living in Bhutan, and a seemingly endless supply of plastic containers for your food. So, if you're looking for a dining experience that'll give you decent food with no frills but plenty of cost (still, did we mention the free samples?) all in the comfort of your very own neighborhood grocery store, this is the place for you.
Let’s get right to it, since you’ve probably had to go and re-read that opening paragraph three times already. Apologies to the country of Bhutan and to the fine people at The Piggly Wiggly Corp. Divided into five sections, DCM has it all and there is plenty to choose from. In the center of the space is a large square cooler filled with pre-prepared food, ready for the scooping, slicing, and boxing. The selections range from pre-sliced wedges of lasagna to pre-sliced sections of flank steak and from pasta salad to sweet potato salad, so there’s no want of variety. The process is simple but deadly – you see something you like, you get it, you see something else you like, you pick it up too. Suddenly, you're precariously balancing plastic containers of every size and shape while the smiling checkout clerk tells you the total comes to fifteen dollars and change for a chicken entr?e, two vegetables and a drink. Wow, they're good! There is also a gourmet salad bar station, a hot food station, a cooler with packaged food and sushi, and a coffee bar. The coffee bar serves Starbucks coffee. Take advantage, people! This is the only place in town you can get real Starbucks coffee, which comes from Seattle (we learned this fact from the “internet,” which we predict will be big someday).
We opted for food from the center cooler. Like most of the food at DCM, the pre-made sandwiches are eye-catching, but taste good in a surprisingly ordinary way. It’s obvious that DCM uses fresh ingredients, but for many of the dishes, style seems to take precedent over substance. An albacore tuna sandwich on olive bread looked like a winner, but tasted like… a tuna sandwich. The afore-alluded-to (yep, we made that up) Viennese chicken cutlet with a side of garlic spinach and Szechwan coated green beans tasted like… breaded chicken, spinach and green beans. All these food items were missing a little bit of spice and pizzazz, unless you count the unholy zapping you need to give any items that require heating in the industrial-strength microwave over in the corner next to the napkin dispenser that looks suspiciously like a giant toilet paper roll (now, that's spicy!).
DCM’s hot roast beef sandwich, on the other hand, was a winner. Served on a hoagie-style roll, the very garlicky mayonnaise saved it from being like much of the rest of DCM’s pretty, but shallow, food. The aforementioned chicken quesadilla was very good as well, but not better than what you could get at the many Mexican restaurants around town. DCM does get kudos for the wide variety of soft drinks available (who knew there were so many different brands of fancy root beer?). The bakery section also looked very tempting, although the chocolate turtles we tried at $1.50 a piece were a little too on the tiny turtle side. The food at DCM is made for takeout, but there are several tables inside and out, and dining at a sidewalk table can make for good people watching.
For all its flash, the experience that is DCM ends up a bit shallow (and did we mention it was pricey?). On our well-rounded and introspective gavel rating system, we have to give DCM two out of five gavels. It's a nice place to sample, but you’ll need to bring your spice rack from home if you eat there.
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