Downtown Trader Joe's By End of Year

The end of 2006 cannot come fast enough for this home cook. According to two features in Sunday's Sun-Times (here and here), the much-anticipated downtown Trader Joe's will open by the end of the year on Ontario between Rush and Wabash. Heck, that's not even as far as I walk to go to Whole Foods (or as I prefer to call them, Foods Prices As If They Were Filled With Gold). Not that I don't do most of my shopping at my local Jewel, but sometimes you just want to splurge on something decadent and unusual without having to pay a Whole Foods or, God forbid, Fox & Obel fortune (although for a Queijo da Serra fix or a schmaltz emergency F&O has been very good to me).

So soon, no more dragging out the passport for a CTA run up into the hinterland (read that as Clybourn and Armitage) for a bottle of three-buck Chuck or a box of Trader Ming's pot stickers. This will be one Trader Joe's definitely made for walking. Now if only the Korean Chicago Food Corporation would open a kimchi- and pork-belly-carrying outlet down here, I'd be all set.

(Follow this link for a nifty Sun-Times pop-up map listing all existing, planned, and eminently walkable downtown groceries.)