Monterey Foods

Shopping

from kennetyh r. on yelp.com

"The place is great, clearly. They have awesome fruits and vegetables, purchased by Mr. Fujimoto at the produce market while you were sleeping. The personnel are friendly and accomodating -- if you can't find what you want, they'll direct you to it or consider stocking it.

It's natural to compare the Monterey Market to farmers' markets and to the Berkeley Bowl. MM is cheaper than both. It loses to the Berkeley Farmers' Market in the salad category and for certain specialty items. It has a lot less selection than the Berkeley Bowl even as far as produce goes. Also, BB has a serious selection of traditional supermarket items that MM doesn't carry. Further, the BB has a butcher, a fish counter, a deli counter, and so on -- all lacking at the MM. Finally, the Berkeley Bowl is open on Sundays!

Take the MM on its own terms, and you'll be happy.

As someone else pointed out, the Monterey Market is traditionally stronger than the Berkeley Bowl in its selection of mushrooms. That can be important. Another wrinkle is that the MM has a weird automatic orange juice machine that will squeeze for you a jug of orange juice on demand. (Ask at the register as you check out.) In the right season, you can get blood orange juice. The Monterey Market is starting to have a decent wine selection. If you have wines to recommend or ask about, try to find Mickey, the wine buyer. (He usually has a feather duster in his pocket.)

Fruits & Veggies

US

CA

Berkeley

Alameda

1550 Hopkins St

Best of the East Bay 2006

A Visual Map of The Best of the East Bay 2006... I started mapping the East Bay Express Article, but they were leaving out too much relevant info... so I forged ahead with info from friends and themenupage.com