Last night I didn't get off work until Citarella was already closed, which put a crimp in my plans to pick up a nice piece of salmon to turn into gravlax for tomorrow night's dinner. I was going to go to Fairway instead, but the new Whole Foods Market in the Time Warner building is on my way home from work, and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to check it out. So I walked to Columbus Circle, entered the then-silent vaulted marble corridors of the Time Warner über-mall, and descended the escalator into the cavernous depths of Manhattan's largest supermarket.

First of all, the superlative "largest" is a bit misleading as a modifier for "supermarket" in this case. A good half of the market is devoted to prepared foods and cafe seating, which in my book does not a market make. But petty quibbling aside, Whole Foods does have remarkable selection. Their produce section is, though it pains me to say it, better than Fairway's (including the upstairs organic section). It reminds me of the produce section at Balducci's, multiplied by a factor of ten. The rarest wild mushrooms were piled into overflowing baskets: Chanterelles, Porcinis, Black Trumpets, Yellowfoots, even Bluefoots (which I have only seen once before in my life, and never tasted). Precious little baby vegetables from beets to lettuce to cauliflower to carrots lined the aisles. Surely, I thought, I would find my salmon here.

So I made my way to the fish counter, where my awe turned quickly to disgust. Half the fish in their case has previously been frozen. They have two choices for salmon fillets: fresh farm-raised or previously frozen wild sockeye. This is utterly, tragically backwards. Why the hell would you even stock wild sockeye salmon if you're going to freeze it? You ruin the fish, and you drive its price up at every other retail market that carries it. No wonder Citarella can get away with charging sixteen dollars a pound or whatever it is they charge these days.

I left Whole Foods Market in a huff and made my way to Fairway, which knows a thing or two (though not as much as Citarella) about fresh fish. But by the time I got there, the fishmongers were shoveling ice out of the display case and into the sink. I emerged from Fairway doubly mad at Whole Foods, jealous of the precious minutes I wasted staring in dumbfounded disbelief at the incongruity between their produce and fish sections.

Now I know better. You can get the best of everything in this city, but not all in one place. In other words, Manhattan is the exact opposite of Wal-Mart. I guess that's why I live here.