Apparently Dealer Joe’s Has a Cult Following in Hawaii

Some grocery shops have amassed larger-than-life followings through the years. Ask many a Floridian about Publix’s sandwiches and also you’re prone to hear odes to their deliciousness, for example. (And it might be {that a} newer Florida arrival — who occurs to be one of many best soccer gamers of all time — agrees.) It’s one factor to have a mushy spot for a regional speciality and one other factor fully to adore the wares of a retailer that you simply’d actually must cross an ocean to get.

Evidently, although, that’s what number of Hawaiians really feel concerning the meals out there at Dealer Joe’s. A brand new article by Zoe Glasser at The Washington Submit seeks to unravel why many residents of a state the place there aren’t any Dealer Joe’s places make it a undertaking to hunt out Dealer Joe’s meals after they’re touring to locations the place the chain does have varied outposts.

Glasser’s article cites a bunch of causes: the value of varied objects at Dealer Joe’s, the packaging and the way in which that sure objects from the shop make for ideally suited small items for household and associates. There’s nobody easy reply — nevertheless it has led to a phenomenon important sufficient to be lined in a serious U.S. newspaper.

I can relate to this in a giant approach — because of time spent in Iceland a couple of years in the past, I nonetheless have a critical longing for the blended nuts bought by the Icelandic grocery store Bonus. For me, this entails a couple of elements: the mix of nuts concerned is one, and the quantity of salt — simply sufficient to make it salty with out making consuming it an train in dehydration — is one other. And perhaps there’s additionally one thing concerning the function nostalgia can play there — we’re not fairly in Proustian territory right here, however considering of one thing related to a nice journey can deliver again much more nice recollections together with it.