[moregrist]

I don't know the Wegman's in NY at all, but the one I used to use in the Boston area was ... okay?

It was a good grocery store with decent produce, a good frozen section, some nice specialty items, and some decent prepared meals. I would put it at roughly the early-2010s era of Whole Foods with slightly better prices. Now that I'm no longer working near there, I don't miss it much.

So I've never understood the hype. But I've also been told that the Boston stores were pretty mediocre compared to the ones in NY and especially Ithaca.

[bee_rider]

If you live in MA the standard options are Star Market and Stop and Shop, right? New England supermarket chains are already perfect.

I think the comment you are replying to is playing up a specific characteristic of, like, deep-in-the-city NYC (it looks like Wegmans has a place in downtown Manhattan?). I also read it as slightly tongue-in-cheek. People in NYC know what grocery stores look like, I think. They just don’t fit in dense areas.

[PaulHoule]

Well I dunno to what extent the NYC lifestyle distorts the perception of stock market analysts. Do they think there are Duane Reades coast-to-coast?

I used to joke that you couldn't get a good cup of coffee in NYC in the 1990s because there were 2 or 3 Starbucks on every block to fool stock market analysts that the country was saturated with them -- thus driving out the independent espresso bars that you'd find in flyover states that had better coffee and leaving only the completely-indifferent-to-quality bodegas.

[bee_rider]

Was there ever good coffee in NYC? I was a kid in the 90’s so I wouldn’t remember any time before. I grew up in NE and am convinced we

1) just haven’t really ever been on the forefront of coffee

2) invented Dunkin Donuts to flip off the coffee world (I know people sometimes say it is good but I think they are just being contrarian (although I will agree it is really not much worse than, or is just as good as, Starbucks))

Anyway, I’m pretty glad for the explosion of hobbyist coffee, it is pretty easy to make a good espresso at home these days.

[itisit]

> Was there ever good coffee in NYC?

Before all the third-wave shops came along? D'Amico, Sahadi's, Porto Rico, Zabar's, Gillies, and that's about it. You'd have to have been a coffee buff to seek those places out as a consumer, as they mostly served as suppliers to hospitality.

[Bluecobra]

Zabar’s seems incredible, I saw a mini documentary a while ago and want to visit the next time I am in NYC. How many grocery stores are actually cupping their coffee shipments every week?

https://youtu.be/o3p81V6IuWk

[toyg]

NY State vs NYC mismatch here. I expect nobody in NYC goes to Ithaca for groceries... :)

[moregrist]

FWIW, I’m not confused about the two; I’m quite familiar with the NYC metro region.

I haven’t heard any Wegman’s fans comment on their NYC stores. I’ve heard multiple people wax poetic about Wegmans who frequented the Princeton-area store and the Ithaca store.

From my experience, I don’t get it, but I haven’t spent substantial time in either of those stores.