Whole Paycheck Foods

At some point Friday night I got drunker than I anticipated.

Memo to self: Try eating something more than a bag of crisps on the way to the Barcelona Temperance Society.

I think it was right around the time that the charming 20-something straight boy with a fetching smile and rather large hands said, "I wear size 14 shoes."

"Wow, how big's your cock?"

I realized I must have thought that out loud, because his girlfriend answered for him. "Everything's proportional," she assured me, and we had another round of tequilas.

And then we all flirted some more. He wants to take me to Oxford for a week to get my motorcycle license later in the summer. And I remember most of what happened after.

So I laid fairly low yesterday morning. Last time I woke up with a really fuzzy head after over-zealous flirting with straight boys was July 7, 2005. No point in trying to repeat that.

Larry, who went to bed at a reasonable hour on Friday night, left for the grocery around 10 o'clock yesterday a.m. to round up our weekly provisions. A couple hours later the phone rings.

"Did you get my message?" he asks. Apparently he'd called my mobile, which I never heard over last night's tequila-induced buzzing in my head.

He'd been on his way to Edgeware Road when he spied a Whole Foods bag. So he headed over to Chelsea to give the new store a visit.

Unfortunately, he doesn't pay attention to much outside of the workaday world, and didn't realize that Whole Foods was on Kensingtion High Street ... not in Chelsea at all. An easy mistake, as we used to shop at Whole Foods in Chelsea when we lived in New York. And really, who doesn't get New York and London neighborhoods confused?

Now you know why I drink.

"Why don't you come meet me here, we can do some shopping and have lunch?'

I didn't realize that Whole Foods just opened this week, so in my haze I agreed. Oy. It was a mob scene.

The store itself is amazing. It's a lot like the New York stores (more like Columbus Circle than Seventh Ave, for those who've been to those franchises). Three floors of fresh, reasonably healthy, overpriced foodstuffs. The cheese and fish departments are both brilliant ... although I'm still trying to wrap my head around salmon that sells for 20 quid a kilo (that's about $20 a pound ... is fish really that expensive?).

I guess that's why we call it Whole Paycheck Foods.

I think most of the people there were, like us, more interested in scoping out the new store than doing any real grocery shopping. As we queued to check out (a fifteen-minute wait, with around 30 tills in operation), I noticed that most people had only one or two items. One guy waited a quarter of an hour to buy a bottle of wine. Surely there are other less crowded wine merchants in Kensington?

We managed to spend £45 on some cheese, crisps, bread and nuts. But they're quality products, and like a good restaurant, you're paying for ambiance and service. Everybody that works there is really friendly and very, very helpful. Wonder how long that will last.

One thing will keep me coming back is the freshly baked Kalamata bread. It's the same recipe as what we used to buy in NY. Absolutely delicious ... it's especially good toasted. Not unlike 20-something straight boys.