In this era of hippy-dippy, gluten-free, all-natural organic food, going to Whole Foods is just a foregone conclusion. You, assuming you're lucky enough to not live in our city's vast food desert, are going to round up all those stupid reusable bags, hop in your Subaru, and head to the nearest for your fix of hulled hemp seed, fish oil, and sustainably sourced booger-wipes for the kids. In this bourgeois food world, Whole Foods is a status symbol -- if you have $46 to spend on a jar of magical honey, you're practically living the American dream.
And yet, we bitch. It's a time-honored tradition of urbanites, complaining about how these organically produced wonderlands aren't the perfect utopias that those hemp-wearing corporate overlords in charge promised us. Sometimes, you actually have to LOOK for a few seconds before locating the organically pressed olive oil. Ugh.
Here, the five Whole Foods stores that exist inside Dallas' city limits -- we know how picky y'all are about geographical accuracy -- ranked in order of how likely they are to make you want to go on a kale-boosted killing spree.
Lomo Alto Given its proximity to the ritziest neighborhood in town, the Lomo Alto Whole Foods is small, never has that damn smoked mozzarella salad that I'm addicted to at the salad bar, and is organized like a schizophrenic Ikea. Better be careful in that treacherous, Tollway-adjacent parking lot, lest a land yacht send you and your organic, fair-trade mangos to the hospital.
Park Lane This is a Whole Foods in the sky. You'll probably be involved in a four-car pile-up or kill a pedestrian in the parking garage as you make your way up from Central Expressway, but no matter -- that fresh-pressed green juice is very important.
Addison (Village on the Parkway) Take everything about the aforementioned Whole Foods, and then jam it into a bustling shopping center slammed between two major intersections, and you have the Whole Foods at Village on the Parkway in Addison. This Whole Foods has valet of all things, which you will undoubtedly need because all of the parking spots are taken up by drunken suburbanites who've filled up at Social House and Yard House and every other House-related bar in that shopping center. Be prepared to stand in line behind a lady who has never seen quinoa before and has one million questions about how to use it and whether it's grown around here.
Lakewood Ah, Lakewood. Home to so many parents of so many future yuppies. This Whole Foods is always packed, because apparently no one in Lakewood has a job. Good luck making your way through the wine bar, which is always wall-to-wall with sandal-wearing people who have no concept of the amount of space they take up with their hand gestures. When you leave, just try to push a shopping cart full of pricey bottled water down that mountain (ok, hill) they call a parking lot.
Preston/Forest This is a Whole Foods for people who really don't want to go to Whole Foods. There's less of the hippie food, more of the $18 cupcakes and juice smoothies. The people who frequent the Preston/Forest Whole Foods are the type who listen to everything Gwyneth Paltrow has to say and actually have the money to finance that kind of lifestyle. Elbow them all out of the way as you load up one of those soggy cardboard trays with everything unhealthy on the salad bar.
