Fresh and Easy is Icky and I am Back from the Dead

We drive past the Fresh and Easy every morning and have been waiting eagerly for it to open. We have no kitchen due to a remodel gone horribly awry and we have lived for months on prepared foods and while we appreciate the quality we are sick to death of Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods and were looking forward to some good alternatives at the new Tesco venture. We arrived at about 6 and the store was jammed. It was obvious that a lot of the prepared foods had been sold out but what was there, to me looked tragically unappetizing. There were pints of coleslaw swimming in thin gray liquid and bags of brownish salad greens. We tasted a salty, rather acrid tortilla soup. I circled the store three times trying to find one acceptable item to feed my husband. I ended up with some lackluster chicken fajitas. These are prepared foods of the ilk that one finds at Vons and bear no comparison to what is offered at T.J.’s or Whole Foods. There are frozen store brand dinners in the freezer and perhaps it was just the incredibly unattractive packaging and graphics but I truly would rather eat a Lean Cuisine. There was one aisle of meat and chicken and perhaps two different fish choices, all heavily packaged and far less interesting than even the scant butcher items at Trader Joe’s. The produce was all packaged and none looked farm fresh. The store carries a lot of non-Tesco products but mainly really junky brands of cookies and cereals and other items I would never buy. The store will probably do well as a smaller version of the Albertson’s it replaced. The quality is comparable to a big chain grocery and will never replace Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods and farmer’s markets as our major source of foodstuffs.
I also found the store stark and ugly with a crummy warehouse ambience. I’m not sure either whether I’ll ever be able to get into the groove of scanning and bagging my own groceries.