There used to be a chain of really wonderful grocery stores in the DC/MD/VA area owned by a local family. Magruder’s was a great place to shop – small stores filled to brimming over with great local produce, impeccable meats (they cut their own in each store), bakeries (ditto, but they also carried specialty items from renowned local bakeries). They were the first to stock international foods, and to cater to our rapidly increasing immigrant populations.
You’d find yucca and jicama and a whole area in the produce section for Latino items long before any other food stores even knew what those things were. They also hired all kinds of folks, so you always found someone who could translate anything.
They carried so many different kinds of coffee beans, all at very reasonable prices.
All their prices were reasonable, on everything.
Their delicatessens were fabulous. They made all their own side dishes and stocked Boar’s Head before anyone around here knew who they were. Their selections were vast and so delicious. Not for Magruder’s was that little spoon and cup used by so many places to give samples – you got a big, overloaded plastic teaspoon to taste whatever struck your fancy.
They also had agreements with local fisherman, back when the waters were safe. On Fridays, their shellfish and fresh fish went on sale, and they did land office business, cleaning, filleting, doing whatever the customer wanted with their fresh fish.
They steamed your lobsters for you while you shopped, long before anyone ever thought of doing that.
They were the place to order the Christmas standing rib roast, the veal breast for the
vitello tonatto you decided you absolutely had to fix for the dinner party, the organic turkey at Thanksgiving, the butterflied leg of lamb for Easter.
I started shopping there when we moved to the DC area in 1973, so I was saddened as I watched them close down. So many nice folks who had spent their lives with the stores, all of a sudden out of work.
All their signs were hand-made, Sharpies on colored paper, and they always had a big produce display in front of the store during the growing season. They were just plain down home, and I always loved shopping there.
But, over the past ten years, they started closing stores. It became hard to compete with the big corporations like Safeway, and when Giant was taken over by Ahold, Magruder’s fate seemed sealed. More stores closed.
I hadn’t been in a Magruder’s for a couple of years, because now there is only one left in Virginia, and one in DC, and neither is very convenient for me. But, when I got a call telling me that a certain shipment of shrimp was on its way from Florida, from a fisherman’s company, someone I know and trust, I figured I’d hightail it over there today and get a bunch. Out of clean waters, and immediately iced and flown here. Plus, the price was amazingly low.
Today, I took a young friend with me, a thirtyish fellow who’s as sweet as can be, who happens to be the manager of this building where we live. Tony’s job is to keep ever owner happy, and he does a beautiful job.
But, he’s also fun to hang out with, I discovered one day when my car’s battery died at a nearby parking lot, and I just didn’t feel like sticking it out until my mechanic got there with a new battery. I called Tony, who was there in minutes to bring me and my shopping bags home.
A few bottles of wine later, we were friends.
So, today I introduced Tony to Magruder’s. He’s a foodie, and he’s great fun to shop/dine with because he’s up for trying everything. So, while we
kvelled in the produce section of the store, I wandered over to pick up the shrimp, and, since it was next to the fish section, checked out the deli.
Ahhhh.
I remembered that Magruder’s used to make a potato salad that was out of this world. Mustard potato salad, it was called, and I saw it there! They still made it! And it was on sale!!
There was a really funny lady working behind the counter; we’d struck up a conversation while I was picking up my shrimp – she hadn’t known of the sale, so she got some, too. I told her I wanted a couple pounds of the mustard potato salad, and she said, “Want to try another kind?” She pointed to a dish, and I said, “Sure.”
She handed me a big fat teaspoon of it, and when I tasted it, I almost burst into song. “What is that?” I asked.
“Deviled egg potato salad,” she told me.
Oh, man, it was the best potato salad – mayo-based – I’d ever tasted. Truly. “Screw that mustard stuff,” I said, and she started laughing. “Let me have two pounds of the deviled egg salad.”
Her name was Robin, and we chattered away about things, shrimp recipes, the horrible heat. I ordered some provolone and Swiss cheeses, a pound each, and she was about to get that order for me when Tony arrived.
“You have to taste this,” I told him, and asked Robin to give him a taste of the deviled egg potato salad. Then, of course, I introduced them. She asked – everyone does – if he’s my son, but I told her, instead, that he was in charge of keeping me happy, and told her what his job was.
She asked where I lived, and I told her, and she said she’d always wanted to live there, but couldn’t afford to buy a place in that big, beautiful building. Tony told her that there were some units for rent – absentee owners – and if she wanted to look at any, he’d be happy to show them to her.
I hadn’t know that.
She and Tony got into a huddled conversation, while she told him what kind of apartment she wanted. I leaned on my cart, and watched, enjoying people, strangers, talking to each other, that immediate connection being made, and marveled at this world, how it can sometimes be such a pretty little place.
Tony wrote down his name and number for her, and she’ll come over tomorrow to see an apartment he has available. He doesn’t work on weekends, but he’ll come in in the morning to show her around.
Then he asked her for a taste of a seafood salad that caught his fancy. Again with the laden teaspoon, and I enjoyed watching Tony’s eyes bug out of his head. He ordered a pound of it.
When I got all my stuff and Tony his, we bid Robin a fond farewell, and she came out from behind the counter to embrace us both, very carefully, not laying her plastic-gloved hands on either of us.
It was just the nicest transaction.
We checked out, loaded up Tony’s car, and headed home. We prattled on and on about what a great store it was – I got the shrimp I wanted, along with some beautiful Napa cabbage and some cherries, and he found the Pink Lady apples he’d been looking for. We were happy.
A little while ago, Tony called me. He said, “Did you check the prices on your deli stuff?”
I said, “No, why?” I really hoped Robin hadn’t screwed up, because I truly did not feel like going back – even though Magruder's was always instantly ready to refund your money for whatever reason.
Did I mention they have no “Membership” requirements, no bar coded tags to carry on your keychain, no way of monitoring your purchases?
And that Tony, when he approached me at the deli counter, held out a pork roast he’d found? Gorgeous, just the right amount of fat (Tony is a Southern boy, and loves his pig, as do I), it was, indeed, a thing of beauty, perfectly cut and trimmed.
“Four dollars!” he crowed. “They having a pork roast sale. This is gonna be great in my crockpot!”
On the phone, Tony said to me, “Go check the prices on your stuff. Go on.”
I took the two one-pound containers of that marvelous potato salad – it was, I remembered, $4 a pound – out of the refrigerator, and looked at the price sticker on the bottom.
One said “$1.18,” and the other said “$0.89.”
“What is this?” I asked Tony.
He said, “My seafood salad was forty-nine cents. My potato salad wasn’t even a dollar.”
“Robin,” I said, and he said “Robin. Check your cheeses.”
I realized, when I took them out of the cold cut drawer in the fridge, that they felt heavy. Heavier than the pound I’d requested.
The Swiss, which was $7.99 a pound, was marked “$2.08,” and the provolone, which was the same price, was marked “$1.76.”
Just out of curiosity, I pulled out the kitchen scale, and weighed them.
Almost two pounds, each of them.
“Robin did this,” I said to Tony.
“It wasn’t a mistake,” he said.
Some of the people involved in this story are African-American, and some are Caucasian.
But, today, at Magruder’s, there were people enjoying each other, and making plans for the future, and maybe doing business, and just being nice to each other, and Robin will get a new apartment and Tony got seafood salad and potato salad, and I got all this stuff, and this is what happens in a small-town store when people just want to give other people a break. Just because they liked each other.
Tony asked me, “Can we go to Magruder’s all the time, can we, please?”
And I told him we certainly could, oh, yes, we certainly could…………….
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