After three long years, the Westside Supermarket reopened its doors last Friday. When it closed in 2004, disgruntled shoppers covered the store closing sign with graffiti that related stories of loves lost and found in the market's produce aisles and threats to move away from the neighborhood as a result of being left without a "decent" supermarket. Having arrived in Morningside Heights too late for firsthand experience of the original Westside Market, foodie Elizabeth Grefrath made her inaugural trek to the legendary store this Monday.

The delightful aroma of nearly ripe produce greets the customer steps before entering the new Westside Market, tempering the sweaty stink that overtakes New York in the summer. The sight of fresh fruits and veggies is almost as refreshing—and at the Westside, unlike you can buy your roughage without breaking the bank.

Towers of tinned tuna! Exotic foreign juices! Nutella for $1.99/13 oz! You'll never do to Fairway again--a trip down the aisles reveals that Westside prices on cereal, rice, soup, pasta as good or better than the mother of all grocery stores on 76^th and 125th.

The cheese area, not an aisle but an island of fromage surrounded by outlying sample stations, quickly becomes my favorite part of the store. The astonishing array features everything from delicate and tender mozzarella di bufala to designer hard cheeses, such as the exquisite Emmanthal, and some melting-out-of-its-rind brie. After aiding a vertically challenged customer in reaching for water crackers located about the cheese, I heard a child mope that "this place probably doesn't have lemon ice pops." The mother answered, "oh no, I'm sure they do."

The rumor mill is spinning with reports that upmarket grocery chain Whole Foods is set to move into a new condo development to supplant Park West Village, along Columbus Ave. from 97th to 100th Streets. New York real estate blog Curbed notes that, "because something about these Whole Foods rumors always seems to play out, we're calling this one a done deal." Bwog speculates that this could spell salvation for Whole Foods fans otherwise disinclined to trek down to the Columbus Circle store for fancy foodstuffs, not to mention competition for uptown mainstay Fairway and nearby newcomer Citarella. With the long-departed West Side Market set to reopen at 110th and Broadway soon, our area's grocery store wars could be heating up again.

Meanwhile, the new luxury high-rise Fifteen Central Park West (designed, incidentally, by architect Robert A.M. Stern C'60, who also left his touch on our very own Broadway Residence Hall) will bring electronics megastore Best Buy a little closer to campus when it opens in the tower's Broadway base. The neighborhood's certainly come a long way ever since Meg Ryan learned, in that quintessential 90s romantic comedy, You've Got Mail, to stop protesting, and fall in love with chain stores- or at least their proprietors' charming online personas.

-CJS