Rik's reviews
Review of Unpackaged
05 Dec 07, 14:30
100% organic 
Unpackaged is a great little shop on Amwell Street that sells eco-friendly, Fair Trade and organic products. The concept is quite simple, you bring your own containers from home and fill them up with whatever you need - no need to get more than you require. They sell foods from fruit and veg, to seeds and even chocolate!
The staff are really friendly and helpful, and they are genuinely passionate about providing the best quality products. I bought quite a few vegetables from them and it's far superior in quality and taste than anything at Sainsburys or Tescos. By far, the best red pepper I've had is from here.
When people think of organic food, they think of the price. Luckily Unpackaged is really reasonable, especially for what you get. The only reason I've give it four, rather than five, is that I wish they did more products, maybe some organic meat products for instance, but the shop is still really young, so maybe it's on the agenda.
If you're a fan of high-quality, reasonably price, incredibly tasty food, then Unpackaged is the place for you.
2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Review of Whole Foods
25 Jun 07, 14:08
Expensive and bad tasting 
After getting slightly stuck in Kensington yesterday and not being able to get home in time to do the weekly shop, I decided to check out Whole Foods, the brand new organic supermarket that's got tree-huggers and eco-warriors into a tizzy.
The first thing you notice when you walk in is how American the store seems. Most supermarkets manage to retain some Britishness about them, despite being foreignly-operated, but Whole Food seems like it's been transported directly from the middle of America. You'd be excused for thinking that the prices were in dollars too, but unfortunately they're in good old pounds sterling, which makes Whole Food verging on the ridiculously expensive.
An example of this is a loaf of organic bread for £1.99, or a pack of sausages for over 3 quid. Now, you'd be let off buying this if it was of the highest quality, but eating the bread was like eating cardboard. It wouldn't toast either, and tasted horrible. I seriously have had Tesco's cheapest value bread that's been better. The sausages were also foul too and had all the texture of thick rice pudding. These products were Whole Foods branded too, so you think that they'd want to be representative of the company.
I did however buy some vegetables to go with my sausages which were actually delicious. There were as good as any veg box scheme you can get, although at an heavily inflated price.
I know people might say that this place has better food, but I think that if you want tastier food, you would be far better off (in the monetary sense as well) going for a normal supermarkets organic range. Whole Foods will be popular over here as it has been in America, but it really needs to look at it's quality control and try not to sell food that just doesn't taste nice.
6 out of 6 people found this review helpful.