> Have you tried some more affordable "normal" supermarkets like Key Foods

I think this is what the parent is saying: that, for the price, these places have inconsistent quality and selection. This has been my experience as well. And if you live in the outer boroughs, depending on the neighborhood, these stores can be outright disgusting.

But I'm also not originally from NYC and when I go back home to visit, I'm reminded how ubiquitous cheap and high quality grocery shopping is for pretty much the rest of the country.

OP, if really high quality produce at a surprisingly reasonable price in Manhattan, you might be surprised at what Eataly has to offer. For me Fresh Direct and Food Kick are where I go for consistency.

I live in lower Manhattan, so I'm speaking from experience. I can even list specific store locations if requested...

It's just not hard to find clean, fresh produce at a reasonable price here.

But it's also not hard to find people who move here from a very different environment and it takes them a while to figure out where to get the stuff they want, because it's not organized quite the same as your average middle american suburb. That's OK, practice makes perfect

Trader Joe's has terrible produce and meat with a short shelf life. Too many times I've bought rice and boxed pasta that contain dead bugs that float to the top when boiling.

The bugs are an indication of poor storage the rudimentary milling and processing. Most likely a one or two step processing before it hit the shelves.

Multi-stage milling usually get rid of that. If you're shopping organic you should be happy about the bugs, unfortunately.

I don't buy produce and meat from TJs, because local supermarkets have better deals. I just buy dry/frozen goods from TJs, and have yet to experience what you did, shrug.

As long as we're sharing anecdata, in my experience TJs has decent quality control... but it depends a bit store to store.

You'll be fine. Chinese citizens eat all sorts of insects.

I used to live halfway between Western Beef and Whole Foods. Whole Foods was crazy expensive with great quality, and Western Beef had awful quality but great prices. (We used to joke "You can't leave Whole Foods without spending $100 no matter how little you try to buy. You can't leave Western Beef spending more than $40 no matter how hard you try."

Now that I'm out West, I've seen the middle take over. Safeway has closed much of the quality gap, with much better prices. The top of the market can't grow forever. There's a reason they call it "Whole Paycheck." It's also an incomplete store. If I need to go to Safeway for shampoo anyways, I might as well buy my organic FancyPantsStuff there too if it's cheaper that Whole Foods.

Safeway has changed a lot over the past five years. I used to be a kind of reluctant Whole Foods shopper, but have just recently been surprised by how comparable Safeway has become at a much more affordable price point.

I think there are probably a lot of people like you and me who were never part of the whole foods cult but still appreciated the product, and are realizing that now we can get the same stuff for less elsewhere.

New Yorker too, I have have lived in all the boroughs and have also shopped Key Foods, C Town, Western Beef, Food Bazaar etc, as well as Trader Joe and Whole Foods.

I personally think it all boils down demography and subjective tastes. There's the millennial, "wannabe- australopithecine"/paleo crowd that tend to fancy WholeFoods and Trader Joes.

Then there's frugal crowd, or the majority that prefer function over form and don't cheer-lead unsupervised organic labeling.

There will always be someone ready to protect the rationale to pay a premium. The main problem is those who get roped into idolizing the hive-mind without noticing the sales pitch.

I'm not in NYC (Phoenix here) so can't really comment on the local markets there. Here in Phoenix, there's a chain called Sprouts that has produce about as good as Whole Foods (or AJs) while being quite a bit less. As for meat there's Basha's (owns AJs) which is a bit less, similar quality. For everything else there's Fry's (Kroger) or Walmart. In the end, it depends on most of what I'm looking for as to what store I'll go to. In general it's only when I want more mushroom varieties fresh that I'll venture into an AJs or Whole Foods. I don't do the boxed "organic" anything, as it's usually just overpriced with dubious additional quality.

I do wish more meat/egg sources labelled what feed they use as I find that influences flavor far more than organic v. not.