How do they get so much stuff – and so many people – into such a small space?
Since the early 1880’s, Oakville Grocery has been a pitstop for weary travelers and hungry neighbors. The store, on the corner of Oakville Crossroad and Highway 29, is a “grocery” the way an Apple retail location is a hardware store. Which is to say hardly at all.
When I lived in Canada in the mid 1980s, I made a point of visiting Oakville Grocery to get new product ideas for a line of food products I was developing. In those heady, early-foodie-days, Oakville Grocery was light-years ahead of other retailers in America, offering gourmet products – sauces, syrups, pretzels, pickles, olives, cooking ingredients – which you couldn’t find elsewhere.
In the late 1990s, during the dot-com boom, and before the bust, some 3,000 people would cram into Oakville Grocery on a summer Saturday. Into an 800-square-foot space! You had to go outside to get enough space to lift your elbows to be able to put your hand in your pocket to pay for the exotic sandwiches, or olives, or wine, you wanted to buy.
Times have changed; the throngs are thinner and the present owner, Leslie Rudd (of Rudd Vineyards) is trying to reshape the mix of products at this venerable food shop. His issue: How does he make it different from the other food emporium he owns just up the road, Dean & DeLuca?
For as long as I can remember, locals have been stopping and shopping at Oakville Grocery. Naturally, we cherish the quieter, off-hours, when the store is relatively calm. My fondest memories include the numerous times that I’d be in the store getting a coffee and one of the incredible chocolate-cherry cookies, and Bob Mondavi would come sailing up to the store in his car, leave the motor running and his door aflappin’, he’d amble in, and order “my regular!”
There are bigger food stores in Napa Valley (Whole Foods), there are cheekier food stores in Napa Valley (Trader Joe’s), there are superior food stores in Napa Valley (Sunshines Food Market), there are sexier food stores in Napa Valley (Dean & DeLuca), but there is only one classic, vintage, must-experience food store for visitors in Napa Valley -- and you’re looking at it above (illustration by Lisa Livoni) – Oakville Grocery.
Oakville Grocery, 7856 St. Helena Highway, Oakville, CA 94562 . Tel: 707)-944-8802.
The espresso bar opens at 7 am daily. The store is open 8 - 6 pm daily.
Local Color, a regular feature of napaman.com, is illustrated by Lisa Livoni, one of Napa Valley’s most talented watercolorists.
For reprint permission, or to obtain copies of this, or any other Local Color image, please contact [email protected].
In many respects, this series could be called Napaman’s Top 100 Napa Valley Attractions.
These are the places I send family and friends, and which I personally endorse
as being the Best of the Best of Napa Valley.
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