Waitrose

Waitrose is great. This is a bad store though. It’s the old Woolworths shop, and you can tell. Very small, oddly and badly laid out and without some key things.
Go to the much better shop on Whitecross St.

I don’t know what my problem is — I’m obsessed with grocery stores. Whenever I’m traveling, roaming the aisles of a foreign store is one of my favourite ways to spend some time. And: productive! I learned about blue Chimay beer and fiery Cheetos and smoked canned seafood this way!
(y’all will still be my friend, right? I know that list above sounded a little off-​putting)
Anywhoos…Waitrose. I really like their brand line of things, and their cheeky «a dash of this» and «a pinch of that» descriptions.
When it comes down to it, though… Waitrose, I’m pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down.
Three notables:
— Kingdom Chocolates are a new company launched this spring. They do a groovy dark chocolate marmalade bar and a milk chocolate PB bar. I’ve found them nowhere but at Waitrose
— «Out of Africa» nuts (originating from Kenya) are seriously delicious. Like, I need to hide the bags in my flat so that I have to pause before just HOOVERINGTHEMALLATONCE. Perfectly dry-​roasted macadamia nuts, if they’re yo’ thang (and they should be)
— Newest discovery: the rotisserie chickens. They are all free-​range, though there is the option to get exclusively corn-​fed birds as well as seasoned options with rosemary and other herbage. I go plain, and it’s roughly 3 pounds and it is enough chicken for two meals. Free-​range, delicious, warm and, best of all, *I* don’t have to deal with cooking meat (it’s just never been a skill of mine).
Unilocal note: sometimes I love going shopping and buying exclusively things with «reduced» tags on them. Scored some rhubarb and a root veg casserole for pence (literally) that way.

Usual quality range of foods and fantastic customer service the checkouts leave much to be desired. Its just not a big enough space to fit in everything a decent supermarket needs. I think they are now on their third attempt at the layout of the checkouts and the latest try with a wall of self service tills is no better than before. Cramped and slow. Small butchery I would still rather stay on the bus to Holloway where it is less busy and stocks a better range.

The food there is extremely delicious and the place is full of comfort! One of the best places I have recently visited!

Expensive yes-​but the quality of the food here is well worth the extra. Plus the advantage is that it is less crowded than Sainsbury’s and Marks and Spencer’s in the same row so you can get around quicker. Don’t be surprised to see local Islington celebrities in the queue with you too-​surreal!

Hands down awesome place to purchase food. Excellent quality (discovered some really nice cheese there) and great selection. They’re «Waitrose brand» stuff is pretty fantastic too. The staff is very friendly and helpful (any time I asked where something is they would be sure to walk me over to that item). And even when there’s a long queue they have a great system set up to handle it (English efficiency) with a screen showing the next person in line which number register they should go to next.
I was also given a token, based on the amount of money I spent on my purchase there, that I was allowed to deposit into one of three boxes for charities. The tokens help give money to the respective charities. Very cool.

Q: How do you know you’re standing in the centre of the beating heart of yummy-​mummyville?
A: You find yourself pulsating in a queue 40 people deep (20 standing, 20 resting easy in prams) at 10:15am. On a Tuesday.
Yet where else could I go for that low-​fat Feta cheese, those perfectly ripe avocados, raw almonds, the only decent veggie burgers around and the rare-​as-​a-​magic-​sparkle-​unicorn whole wheat tortillas? Turns out there’s, well, nowhere. but. Waitrose. (And heaven, of course.)
Mum’s do always know best…

Waitrose is like a higher end version of the Marks & Spencers food-​hall with both private label brands and the mainstream brands you love. Out of the 3 supermarkets near Angel (all amazingly next door to one another), Waitrose stands out for the highest quality. Their prepared meals are great.
This is not the best place to shop for your staples (do that at the ginormous Sainsbury next door), but if you seek better produce and meats, then you need to go to Waitrose.
Warning to the wise, they close early on Sundays, and don’t even try coming here after 4pm on a Sunday… it’s a zoo. The line moves quick though:)

Did Angel really need another supermarket? With Sainsbury’s next door and Marks & Spencers across the street I suppose I would have said no. However, all three still seem to be going strong and Waitrose is doing very well as the new kid on the block.
It’s not where I’d do my main weekly shop, it’s a bit pricey for that, but it’s good enough to pick up a few key ingredients for my evening meal. I like that they usually sell things the others don’t often sell, such as Venison, and their fruit and veg is usually pretty good too.
I wish the Hackney Woolworths had become a Waitrose too, but then I might have been tempted to shop here a bit too often.

I am pretty demanding when it comes to the quality of my produce. I mean, who wants to buy fruit and see it go bad in a couple of days?! The selection at Waitrose is great — lots of variety at reasonable prices. Yesterday I bought a carrot for only 7p; what a steal! The wines are awesome: I found an amazing bottle of vinho verde for only £7. The Indian food and spice section is exceptional too. The lines are often long, but they move quickly, even in the late afternoon. The staff is friendly and helpful. I’ll definitely be a regular!

When I first read last year in the local paper that a Waitrose was going to be opening in the former location of Woolworths on Liverpool Road I did a little dance of glee. Yes, Islington has lots of different supermarkets, from Sainsburys to Marks and Spencers to Iceland, but come on now, Waitrose is the undisputed GOD of food shops. Pricey it may be, but it’s all about quality, and I was surprised that it had taken so long to get one into upmarket Islington. I was also pleased that Woolies would be replaced by something so appealing, as I had a long standing love affair with that store. It had it all– The old ladies with their perms and their faint smell of wee, aisle upon aisle of toys, a variety of random kitchen utensils and a whole host of other enjoyable goods. But this isn’t a review of Woolworths, so I’ll move on to the task at hand: expressing my disappointment in the new Waitrose.
Now I’m sure I’m not alone in having had high expectations of the latest addition to the supermarket options of N1; In fact I know I’m not, as seemingly the whole borough poured to Waitrose on the opening day about a month ago. What struck me about the store, and continues to strike me each time I go in, is how much MORE they could have done with the place. I mean, sure, they’ve got a fish and meat counter, and a bakery, and lots of really tasty looking ready meals and so on and so forth. But have you ever been to the Waitrose in the bottom of John Lewis? Oh my god, that place is like a mecca, with untold numbers of unusual fresh produce and random prepared foods. Maybe my expectations were too high, but the food at this branch is almost identical to that you can find at the branch just ten minutes away on Holloway Road. Yes it’s slightly more convenient, but I wanted FIREWORKS, I wanted to be WOWED, I wanted to spend hours in this place oohing and ahhing over the delicious offerings [I really like food, can you tell?]. Instead I found a few things that looked good, but nothing that really got my heart racing. A disappointment.