Jan 26 2005

Grocery Shopping in Sin City

by Megan Edwards

Las Vegas has a well-established reputation as a good place to eat, mostly because cheap, all-you-can-eat casino buffets are a long-standing tradition. More recently, with the advent of big-name chefs and their prestigious restaurants, Las Vegas’s reputation has expanded. Even New Yorkers and San Franciscans grudgingly admit that the dining options in Sin City deserve the sparkling array of stars they’re now receiving from guidebooks and reviewers.

What gets little attention, however, is the more mundane rung of the food chain in Las Vegas: grocery stores. For a city that produces none of its own food, Las Vegas certainly sells a lot of it. Not only are there scores of competing supermarkets, there are specialty stores, ethnic groceries, upscale gourmet shops, and untold numbers of convenience stores.

On the supermarket front, lots of big names are here: Wal-Mart (which just today opened four new “Neighborhood Markets”), Albertson’s, Smith’s, Food 4 Less, and Von’s. They look just like their counterparts in other cities except for the slot machines housed in separate but visible alcoves, usually near the front. Something else that caught my eye when I first moved to Las Vegas is the shelf space dedicated to Hawaiian foods in many stores. Often called “The Ninth Island,” Las Vegas is home to a large Hawaiian community, and the supermarket chains reflect their tastes.

In addition to the run-of-the-mill big guys and warehouse-style operations like Costco and Smart & Final, gourmet groceries like Whole Foods, Wild Oats, and Trader Joe’s attract hordes at several locations, and a number of smaller stores cater to different nationalities. There’s a shop with German specialties at Café Heidelberg, comestibles from the UK at British Foods, and Middle Eastern delicacies at Paymon’s Mediterranean Café Market, to name a few.

Then there’s the International Marketplace. Huge but one-of-a-kind, this big gray warehouse looms on Decatur near the corner of Tropicana. While you’d have a hard time finding Cheerios inside, brand names from the rest of the globe are plentiful. You can buy chocolates from Brazil, soup mix from the Netherlands, and soda pop from Japan. 40,000 square feet of retail space is organized by continent and country. Entire aisles with shelves so high you need a ladder are devoted to tea, coffee, noodles, olives, cooking oil, cocoa, and cans of mysterious vegetables, sauces, pastes, and powders. There are fish, meat, and produce sections, too, piled high with lots of items that might be familiar if you’re from Tierra del Fuego or East Timor. There’s cheese from all corners of the world, and I shouldn’t leave out the entrancing selection of exotic cookies, crackers, and snacks.

As if a global selection of groceries weren’t enough, the International Marketplace also features a large inventory of furniture, dishes, indoor fountains, décor items, plants, toiletries, candy, and cooking utensils. Most are Asian in origin, although the selection of European chocolate bars is impressive.

Combined with the ever-expanding number of fine restaurants, the also-expanding lineup of grocery stores makes Las Vegas truly deserving of its old reputation. Sin City is indeed a terrific place to eat.

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