Mid-Michigan Dining

• 5114 28th St. SE
• Grand Rapids, MI 49512
• (616) 940-1103
• Website

Fresh Market in Grand Rapids

We get to our hotel Friday night and I check my e-mail to find a couple comments telling me to check out Fresh Market near I-96.  The funny thing is, Fresh Market is right across the street from our hotel and I told J on our way in that we should check it out in the morning.  After sitting in our hotel room and relaxing for a little bit, we decided to see if they were still open.  It was 9:30 and no they weren’t so we were gonna have to check back in the morning.

After we got up and got moving, we checked out of the hotel and headed over to the Fresh Market.  It’s located in a little shopping plaza just off the Interstate.  Once again, it’s a good thing there’s not one right down the street.  This is another one of those great grocery stores.  Even though it’s a chain, they haven’t taken the human element out of it or seen how much product they can buy to try and keep costs down.  Instead, they have quality, hard to find products.  We zipped through the produce section without seeing anything really unique because I noticed the butchers in the back.

What a selection of meats.  In the case, they had all the fresh beef and pork you could want, but they also had fresh veal, lamb and chicken.  Yes, fresh chicken.  Most butchers don’t mess with that anymore because of all the risks of salmonella, but they had fresh birds sitting there ready to be eaten.  They also do some marinating and stuffing, but what impressed me was the selection.  I can’t tell you the last time I saw rack of lamb or veal steaks at a butcher shop.

Our next stop was the bakery/pastry section.  We found a lot of interesting pastry’s and chocolates that looked too good to pass up, but we did.  It was still early (for us) and we didn’t need anymore chocolate with fudge left over from yesterday still in the car.

We gave the general merchandise section a quick walk through and I found something I’ve only seen on Rachel Ray but never been able to find in the store.  Tomato paste in a tube.  I always see her using it on 30 Minute Meals and always thought that was a great idea, but I could never find it.  Really, who uses a whole can of tomato paste at one time and what do you do with the leftovers?  I didn’t grab one because I didn’t need it, but now I know Fresh Market sells them.

Fresh Market was great.  It’s smaller than Whole Foods, but it’s the same concept.  I hear there’s a store in Williamston, but The Fresh Market website doesn’t show that.  It would be awesome if that was true.  I could hit Merindorf’s for some things and then hit Fresh Market for everything else.