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Food retailers take old concepts, such as the once-common butcher shops and greengrocers, and re-fashion them with cunning names and nostalgic settings. Chain supermarkets house specialty shops within their sterile fluorescence while upscale department stores show off their "country" markets. Palolo greengrocer
offers old-fashioned appealAll of this to appeal to the consumer who wants a feeling of an old-fashioned "shoppe" but the convenience of one-stop shopping.
Still, there are those who want the real thing. The popularity of farmers' markets attests to that. The resurgence of neighborhood greengrocers, then, is a natural follow.
T&E Produce is a humble, no-frills establishment at 1427 10th Ave. in Palolo, a few blocks mauka of Waialae Avenue. Pineapples, apple bananas and tables laden with papaya flag passers-by with their bright golds and greens.
Inside, bins hold vegetables and other fruits at prices you won't see at the supermarket.
Most of the produce -- Manoa lettuce, cherry tomatoes, eggplant, green beans, cucumbers, choi sum, bok choy and other Asian vegetables -- sells for $1 a bag. Long squashes and fat bunches of green onions also sell for $1 each.
Apple bananas are 79 cents a pound, papaya 59 cents a pound and ginger $1.29 a pound. The market also carries lemon grass, kabocha, spinach, fern shoots, cilantro and other herbs as well as seasonal items such as Kahuku corn.
Most of the produce comes from small farms in Waialua, Kahuku and Waianae, said Mimi Phouthavanh, who tends the store for owners Tony and Edwina Santa Monica. Wednesdays and Saturdays find her driving around Oahu, making pick- ups.
The store, which opened late last year, has built a reputation for papayas with neighborhood people, some of whom pop in daily to shop and talk.
"They come back, they say they like our papaya -- so sweet," she said.
Cynthia Oi, Star-Bulletin
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