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Holy shiitakes! Even though I love to cook, I never thought a grocery store could change my life. Central Market has--and twenty varieties of mushrooms are only one reason. (Gary Cartwright''s Texas).

Article Excerpt
MY CART RUNNETH OVER: Now what was that product code?

WHAT I LIKE TO DO WHEN I'm not doing what I like to do best is eat. It follows that I also like to buy groceries and cook. Getting good groceries hasn't always been easy in Texas. Thirty years ago, if I had a recipe that required, say, pancetta, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and shiitake mushrooms, the easiest way to procure those ingredients was to fly to New York and take a cab to Balducci's. I was born to a generation for whom bread meant Mrs. Baird's white, and lettuce that didn't come from the garden was unfailingly iceberg. Chickens came from the chicken house out back, and extra-virgin olive oil was not something you talked about in mixed company. Then, in 1994, H-E-B, a grocery chain that I'd never thought of patronizing, changed my life by opening its first Central Market location on North Lamar Boulevard in Austin, a five-minute drive from my house.

Ever since, Central Market has been one of the poles on the axis of my life. Whole Foods is actually a few blocks closer, and I shop there too, but I've come to think of it as a smaller, less exciting, and more-organic-than-thou version of Central Market. The Central Market experience, you see, is without parallel. Every time I pull...

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