The news in the spring that one of the country’s biggest grocery store chains
was leaving the New Orleans market would ordinarily cause all sorts of
hand wringing and teeth gnashing. After all, it’s not good news when yet
another grocer abandons yet another American city.

But New Orleans is not just another city, and Albertson’s failure there says
as much about New Orleanians’ good taste as it does about the politics and
economics of the grocery store business. In an industry where local and regional chains, let alone and mom-and-pop stores, have almost vanished, New Orleans still has plenty of both. In fact, according to Census Bureau figures, Louisiana has 2 percent of the grocery stores in the United States, but only 1.5 percent of the population.

“What you have in New Orleans is a unique situation,” says Dan Graham, who works for the Dechert-Hampe consultancy in Los Angeles. “You have a culture that takes food and cooking and cooking at home much more seriously than elsewhere in the country. Plus, you have an ethnic population, which the big chains don’t know how to deal with. They want to sell to the big middle, and
that’s just not New Orleans.”

Hence New Orleans has not just several of the biggest national chains, but local chains like Rouse’s and Dorignac’s, plus independents like Langenstein’s, Zuppardo’s, Breaux Mart, and Robért Fresh Markets. These stores are much more than 60,000 square feet of microwavable meals, photo finishing, and a floral department. After all, what does Wal- Mart know about boiling crawfish?

Many stores not only stock local products, such as Louisiana-grown Zatarain’s rice and Camellia beans (including everything from lentils to black beans), but regional specialties such as locally grown Creole tomatoes, Creole cream cheese (a farmer-style cheese that is a cross between cottage cheese and sour cream), and tarte a` la bouille, a Cajun-style egg custard. Rouse’s, for instance, lets local shrimpers sell their product in its parking lots at some stores one
weekend a month.

It’s probably also significant that going to the grocery store remains, for many New Orleanians, a social outing. It’s not unusual, especially in some of
the older neighborhoods, for the same people to be there at the same time,
visiting with the same people they have seen for decades. Some of this attraction may well be due to the plate lunch, a fixture in local grocery stores. Stop by and pick up white beans and rice or barbecued chicken, say hello to
some pals, and buy a gallon of milk. Sure beats driving to the mall.

JEFF SIEGEL