Is It Still 2008 Without Fennel Pollen?

I love Whole Foods. When we began planning the move to Los Angeles, the first thing I did was map the location of every Whole Foods in the metropolitan area and draw a two-mile-wide circle around each scribbled "WF."

Partly that's because MG has a raft of food allergies that are much easier to deal with if you shop at a store that is fanatical about labeling every single ingredient in every single food item, down to the microns of solubized wheat protein in the dash of Worcestershire sauce mixed in with the yolks of their deviled eggs. (Which are, actually, from hell. Don't waste your money -- not nearly enough mayo, way way way too much yolk.)

Partly it's because we used to live in a neighborhood where the closest store WAS a Whole Foods, and we kinda fell in the habit of shopping there.


Partly it's because I have quite the budding addiction to charcuterie, particularly various terrines made with the livers of fattened water fowl.

Okay, look, let's not delve into questions who's-addicted-to-what. The point is, I am solidly pro-Whole Foods.

And yet.

When the two story underground garage is filled to capacity and backed up onto 23rd St., maybe things have gotten out of hand.

When traffic backed up on Wilshire because 23rd St. is jammed all the way into the intersection, maybe we need to reconsider our options.

When the line to get out of the store starts 30 feet inside the front door? Yeah, I think you get the picture.

Everyone was on their best behavior. I got a free piece of pizza for being such a patient customer, and thank god, the lines had been switched into one line/many registers, so you were directed to the next available cashier pretty quickly. But yes, it got a teeny tiny bit hairy there for a second.

One poor daffy lady, her hair in those giant volumizing curlers you always see J Lo wearing in the "behind the scenes" photos in magazines, wandered into the admirably uncrowded stretch open space in front of the registers, and made for cashier until an employee discreetly indicated the line of sixty seven customers stretching to the back of the store and then some.

She blanched, as well she might, for a few seconds later she would have been ripped limb from limb if the employee had not saved her from a life-ending gaffe. Free pizza can calm an unruly crowd, but it's powerless to slow an enraged mob.