Fresh milk products and great customer service at Stew Leonard's!

The Truth About My Dinner Party.

By AMANDA HESSER

(Article Reprinted from the October 9, 2002 edition)

FEW years ago it would have been impossible to imagine New Yorkers leaving the city to shop for groceries. Outside the city were chains where exotic lettuce was more likely to mean romaine. Serious home cooks shopped at Greenmarkets for the best vegetables, Citarella for fish and Fairway for imported cheeses. When they needed paper towels and dish soap, they went to their local Gristede's or Korean grocer and bought in small quantities.

But as big-box superstores like Costco and Sam's Club and destination grocery stores like Stew Leonard's and Whole Foods Market began surrounding the city over the last couple of years, some New Yorkers began hopping into cars, sniffing them out and filling their SubZero freezers with their spoils. Cooks talked of outings to Costco and Stew Leonard's, which opened in Yonkers in 1999 and now counts on 20 percent of its customers to come from Manhattan. Meanwhile, Costco increased the number of stores within 50 miles of the city from 11 to 24 in the last decade, including locations in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, and is continuing an aggressive search for space in Manhattan.

"People say the principal deciding factor about why they go to store A or store B is convenience," said David Ghitelman, an associate editor at Supermarket News, referring to a study by Retail Forward, a management consulting company. "Convenience can mean a large parking lot and a store that's easy to negotiate."

Mr. Ghitelman, who lives in Brooklyn, added that he had never been to Whole Foods in Chelsea, but he has shopped numerous times at one in New Jersey. It has a parking lot and elbow room. Mr. Ghitelman's habits are no different from a vast number of Americans who have changed the way they grocery shop over the last decade. Now this shift is affecting the nation's most competitive grocery market, New York City.

For an avid home cook, the idea of traveling to the suburbs to shop sounded like sleeping with the enemy. The prices at Costco, Stew Leonard's and Sam's Club, when compared with those of Fairway and Key Food in the city, were not overwhelmingly lower, especially considering the cost of gas and the travel time. To see what the appeal is, I set out to throw a fancy New York dinner party, and I went to a big-box store to shop for it, to see if it held up to the hype. On a sunny day last spring, I crossed the George Washington Bridge, headed out Route 80 for 20 minutes and pulled into the Costco in Wayne, N.J. I paid a $45 annual membership fee (typical for wholesale clubs; Sam's Club's fee is $30) and pushed a cumbersome shopping cart toward huge stacks of food and paper goods on pallets. Fluorescent lamps buzzed high above. I noticed a 10-pound box of baking soda, which could last me until I am 92.

But no one was ramming her cart into my Achilles tendons, as happens at Fairway. And as I soon discovered, I could pick up a liter of extra virgin olive oil from Tuscany for $7.99. I lowered the bottle into my cavernous cart and began serious shopping.

At the end of an aisle, there was a mountain of four-pound pistachio bags for $8.49 and a pile of Champion socks at six pairs for $9.99. The pistachios were large and full in their shells. The socks were fluffy and dense. I picked up both. Costco provides an oddly disjunctive shopping experience for a store that prides itself on having a small well-edited selection of products. Because there are almost no choices - one brand of mustard, one brand of dish soap - and because the store carries many fewer products than a typical grocery (about 1,600 as opposed to 25,000), you almost cannot shop with a list and you cannot count on finding foods in their regular places. There is no baking section and no spice rack.

Instead, you must rely on what the buyers at Costco deem staples, and those staples, interestingly, say a lot about what ingredients are now "normal" needs for the average shopper. For instance, San Pellegrino sparkling water is $10.99 a case, and dried porcini mushrooms are $11.99 for eight ounces (as opposed to $11.99 for four ounces at Fairway). But it doesn't mean arborio rice, fresh herbs or sea salt.

And although prices were stellar, quantities were worrisome. What would I do with two quarts of heavy cream? The case of San Pellegrino would not go to waste, but a flat of fresh raspberries is difficult to use up unless you have jam in mind. Thankfully, I had a head of garlic at home, or I would have had to buy three pounds of it.

I did, however, manage to gather the elements of a fine meal: fresh mozzarella and a jar of pesto (the pesto spooned on top of thin slices of mozzarella for a first course); gargantuan top-loin steaks for the main course, with those dried porcinis to mix into mashed potatoes; spinach, avocados and tomatoes for a salad; and an apple pie for $6.99 that could easily serve 12. And because the Wayne store sells liquor, several bottles of very good reasonably priced wine. (If you are shopping for a party and planning to go to Costco to save money, you must be serving at least 12 people to make it worth your while.)

That night, I prepared the dinner for friends, not mentioning where I had shopped. Before the meat went under the broiler, a friend came into the kitchen to say hello. She glanced at the steaks and said: "I know those steaks. Did you shop at Costco? My dad gets them all the time." They were huge steaks, and oddly memorable in that way. I wasn't sure whether to be encouraged or frightened.

Costco has been calculating in its efforts to move into this area. "I get to New York City several times a year," John Eagan, a vice president, said, "and I will go through the gourmet places - Gourmet Garage, Dean & Deluca - just to see what's going on. We know it's a great market."

From 1996 to 2001, annual sales at the clubs grew an average of 10.5 percent, according to Retail Forward. Which is why, perhaps, there are now 14 Sam's Clubs within 75 miles of New York City. Sam's is noticeably less upscale, and for a demanding New York shopper a little dull.

Rather than Grey Poupon Dijon mustard, the store in Mount Olive, N.J., offered a gallon barrel of French's. There were no fresh raspberries or eggplants, and the peaches were the size of small grapefruits. The cold section was filled with things like Kraft singles and TGI Friday's quesadilla rolls. The best time to shop at this chain is perhaps just before the holidays, when you can buy two-pound bags of whole pecan halves for $7.69 for baking, or if you're throwing a cookout and want to pick up Coca-Cola, napkins, ketchup and ground beef in bulk.

Mr. Ghitelman refers to Sam's Clubs as the "neglected middle child of the Wal-Mart empire," which makes sense. Warehouse stores, while they promote discount shopping, are actually designed for a higher income customer, a shopper who can afford to stock up on basics. A store geared toward a less sophisticated, less wealthy customer works differently.

"Consumers tend to use the warehouse to stock up," Sandy Skrovan, the vice president of Retail Forward, said, "but then they continue to use the supermarket for perishable products and that type of shopping."

I left Costco with this impression: that next time I might drive to Costco to buy wine, olive oil, pistachios and sparkling water for a dinner party (perhaps for a pie, too - the apple pie was excellent), but I would rely on my local stores for fine ingredients.

And this is why the big-box stores, which have about 60 percent of their sales in consumables, according to Ms. Skrovan, are trying to add more fresh foods like vegetables and dairy products to increase the frequency that a customer shops, and packaging items as multipacks rather than as enormous single items.

AS a destination store, Stew Leonard's is an entirely different animal. And this was made clear last week when I drove to the Yonkers store, one of three locations in the metropolitan area. From the New York State Thruway, a large silo with the words "Farm Fresh Foods" emerged from a mountain on the horizon.

In the parking lot is a wooden sign that reads, "We're glad you came." It's so hokey that it's charming. (And yet Stew Leonard's has made it impossible for shoppers to turn into the Costco at the base of the mountain. To enter Costco from Stew Leonard's, you must do a U-turn; to exit Costco and get to back to the highway, you must drive back toward Stew Leonard's.)

Once again, I was intent on shopping for a dinner party. I aimed for a similar menu: fresh mozzarella, steaks, potatoes, salad and pie, and plunged into a new experience.

Experience is the operative word at Stew Leonard's, which has two other locations, in Norwalk and Danbury, Conn. It is not so much a grocery store as a theme park for shoppers. It works much as Costco and Sam's Club, although no membership fee is required. Rather than offering a variety of crushed tomatoes, the store sells just one brand at a low price. Its other gimmick is "fresh products," Tom Arthur, president of the Yonkers store, said, meaning that about 70 percent of the items are made on site: soups, roasted coffee beans, smoked salmon and even balloonlike balls of mozzarella.

Originally the Leonards were dairy farmers. It wasn't until 1969 that the family opened Stew Leonard's and began selling other products. Still, its dairy section is staggering, and if you shop at the Norwalk store, you (and your children) can watch milk being bottled.

Entertainment, of the amuse-bouche variety, is a key element. I was barely in the store when a woman offered me cheddar cheese wrapped around a slice of apple. A few yards later, someone handed me a cup of warm apple crumble. Before I left, I could have had focaccia, cheese spread on crackers and coffee cake. In between, there are animated displays of a Chiquita banana and the "Holstein Family Singers," a band of robot cows that sing atop the dairy section.

Along the way, you will also find open work areas where cooks prepare sushi or mozzarella. There are enough distractions that Stew Leonard's could charge you $5 for a gallon of milk and you would probably never notice until you got your receipt.

"Many people would say that this is the ideal," Mr. Ghitelman of Supermarket News said, referring to destination stores like Stew Leonard's and Whole Foods, "to have large stores with a great variety of products, presented in a kind of interesting way, so that shopping isn't just drudgery. It can be entertaining. It can be interesting. It can be educational."

The store also has an unconventional design, similar to that at Ikea, which forces patrons to twist and snake through the entire store to reach the cash registers. You cannot simply run in for a few lemons.

The food is very high quality - there are fresh bay leaves and ricotta salata - and the prices are reasonable. And yet it is not a completely satisfying shopping experience, unless you rely on the prepared foods.

From Stew Leonard's point of view, walnuts and baking powder are seasonal items. In June, you can't get baking powder, but you can get barbecue items and baked beans. And although Stew Leonard's pitches itself as a dairy store, it doesn't sell crème fraîche, an item plenty of New York cooks cannot live without.

I found everything I needed for my dinner party, though. The beef was dry-aged, the mozzarella was made before my eyes and I could buy basil and mint for an improvised fresh pesto rather than a jarred version. I bought well-priced heavy cream ($1.59) in a reasonable volume (a pint) and a name-brand ice cream (Häagen-Dazs). I picked up fresh beets (seasonal) and a single red onion. But I could not get walnut oil for the salad and had no chance to splurge on organic produce. I was amused by the train that ran over my head at the checkout counter, and I was tempted to buy a phalaenopsis orchid for $24.99 (the fresh flower section is excellent). And when the man at the checkout counter carded me for the case of beer in my cart, I was ready to hug him.

But I was glad that I was not depending on specific items to buy or a recipe that I hoped to follow. For that - my regular shopping - I'd battle my way through Fairway.

The dinner for my party was good, but not without flaws. The mozzarella was a bit rubbery and not very creamy, and the pie was dreadful. But the vegetables held up well, and the basil sparkled with flavor. I probably would not shop at Stew Leonard's specifically for a dinner party again. But I might find myself zigzagging through its labyrinth if ever I have a child to amuse.