Viking Village Foods, Reedsburg Wisconsin

It’s easy to forget, splitting my time between the foodie hotbeds of San Francisco and Brooklyn, how the rest of America fills its shopping carts. Walking into Viking Village was a HUGE reality check. From the airplane hangar-sized building to the double-wide aisles to the look of disbelief on the bag boy’s face when I handed him my reusable Baggu, this was nothing like the Park Slope Food Co-op.

But among the giant tins of canned beef, the many varieties of “cheese-like” foods, and Reedsburg’s Frozen Tundra—a freezer section spanning a football field—one can find a small but encouraging array of local and seasonal products. We found eggs from the Reedsburg Egg Company at 99 cents a dozen, produced less than a mile away at a family owned operation. Local honeys, pickles, canned cherry pie filling, and cheeses also dotted the shelves. These are the gems of the locally owned grocery store.

Finding these items in a conventional grocery store in decidedly un-foodie Reedsburg reminded me of this article about compromise and the future of food. Despite their inexplicable Viking theme, Viking Village Foods has the right idea.