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- 3
- Not as good as it could be
The Baltimore area Whole Foods Markets are lackluster in their vegan offerings compared to WF Markets in other areas I've visited. I've heard they're planning to expand this one, so maybe it will get better. At any rate, it is still better than the one in Mt. Washington (north Baltimore), which is by far the worst Whole Foods I've ever set foot in. That store is a terrible place to shop for many reasons, but I'll save them for a review of that specific store. The hot bar here almost always has several vegan options, usually enough to make an entire meal. The cold salad bar also always has some vegan salads in addition to regular green salad fixings. I do find it irritating, though, when they do something like put feta in an otherwise vegan tofu pasta salad. Duh. There is also a fresh sushi case, with vegan sushi and dumplings made by in-house sushi chefs. The fresh bakery case usually has one or two vegan cookies, lately this has been chocolate chip and gingerbread, both of which are good. They also try to stock at least one vegan pastry, either a muffin or scone. All of these are good and recommended. You can also get vegan bagels and rolls (I recommend the pretzel buns!). In the dessert case on the opposite side they stock a line of vegan baked sweets from Sweet & Natural Cafe, a soul food restaurant in the DC area. The cake slices are good (especially the sweet potato one), but they're heavy on the margarine and sugar so I don't advise eating an entire piece at one sitting. I do have an issue with the grab-and-go lunch case here. They used to carry meals from another local vegan soul food caterer, as well as some local vegan Mediterranean packaged food. The soul food offerings were particularly good, and I'd occasionally get one if I hadn't brought lunch that day. Then suddenly they dropped almost all of their local food offerings and replaced them with sub-par Whole Foods items. It was disappointing at the time but not entirely unexpected. Items routinely disappear from the shelves here, never to return, just like they do in every other large grocery chain. I've noticed a general trend in these two WF stores (and probably nationwide) toward stocking WF brand products over other brands. If I was already buying the WF brand then it's not such a big deal, because it's usually cheaper and just as good, but this isn't always the case. But it's less annoying now that I don't do my main grocery shopping at WF.