On Saturday mornings, Michael Ruhlman’s father would post up at the family’s breakfast nook in suburban Cleveland, scribbling the week’s grocery list on a legal pad. The lists were rambling, but the younger Ruhlman often wondered if his father derived some pleasure from forgetting one or two things. Those omitted items required a return trip to the supermarket—another chance to gawk at the bounty on the shelves.
In his new book, Grocery: The Buying and Selling of Food in America, Ruhlman—the acclaimed author of Ratio and The Soul of a Chef—backgrounds his familial lore with exhaustive reporting. The result is a sort of love letter to the institution of the grocery store, and to characters who have helped meet a basic and primal need. Over the course of 22 chapters, he chronicles the foundations and the changing face of the grocery industry, from mom-and-pop corner stores to modern monopolies and the outfits that fall somewhere in between.
