I absolutely love the shopping experience at Whole Foods Market. While the prices can sometimes be steep, I enjoy the atmosphere — the smells of fresh, organic produce, the warm greetings from employees in every area of the store and the amazing selection of deli- and bakery-fresh goodies.
On a recent trip to Whole Foods, while in search of black and white cookies (been craving them ever since I had my first one last winter in New York City), I instead stumbled upon macarons in the sweets display case.
{Whole Foods showed off its new macarons on the top shelf of the goodies display case.}
After I peered at the macarons for just a minute, a smiling bakery employee told me the macarons were a new addition to the sweets case. I requested one of each and asked her who made them, assuming I could be looking straight into the eyes of a mad-mac genius.
She didn’t know.
Yikes.
After checking with her manager, she then told me that the macarons were shipped in that morning from a California patisserie.
Double yikes.
That could possibly explain a few of the cracked cookies sitting front and center in the display case.
{The passionfruit macaron, front and center, is a bit cracked — doesn't affect the taste, but affects the experience and delight of biting into a crisp-shelled macaron.}
Though I know not everything is locally made from scratch, something about this just…bothered me. Though I still purchased the cookies (I even got one for free), I think the idea of buying shipped-from-many-miles-away macarons at Whole Foods for 99 cents a piece affected my experience with these sweets.
Aside from the cracking (I didn’t buy that one), these macarons looked just fine.
Nice footing.
Appropriate filling-to-shell ration.
No bubbles on the shells.
But when I bit into one, the passionfruit macaron, it just seemed…OK. Just OK.
{Whole Foods Market's passionfruit macaron was just...fine.}
The cookie had a small crunch to it, and then my tongue was met with a light, creamy filling — just fine — but the crunch didn’t seem as crisp, as light and shell-like, as I thought it should be.
Perhaps the whole shipped-from-California-that-morning thing was still in my mind, but I couldn’t fight the thought that these macarons may have lost some texture in transit.
Although I would rank these macarons higher than Trader Joe’s frozen macarons, I’m still questioning whether I’d buy them again. They’re inexpensive, for macarons, but I’d probably rather shell out a little bit more for a fresh-made, local macaron.
Maybe someone should bring me some Whole Foods macarons to try again, without knowing they’re from Whole Foods/California, so I can give them one more try…
Have you tried macarons from Whole Foods Market? What did you think? Do you know if they were made in-house or shipped in from far away? Tell me about it in the comments section.
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