In Praise of Roots of Hardwick - a foodie post

Just to say that I have absolutely no personal connection to this gaff or anyone who works there. I've never been given any freebies from them.  I am not in any kind of debt or owe favours.  

I've always been of the opinion that having too many regrets in life is a bad thing.  One of my enormous fears in life is that I might hit the slab without ever having lived close enough to this brilliant place.

I do wish I lived down the road because it's a great shop. It sells everything, or seems to, that you need from a village shop.  A heck of a lot of its fresh food is grown or reared locally.  Brilliant.  It's a foodie's paradise.

With these types of places you sometimes get that pang of guilt that you should be supporting them a bit more than you do because they're hard-working types and this is a local worth while venture, but you then realise that a pack of two pork chops is going to cost you the equivalent of three days' wages, or that for the price of two foetid old carrots covered in a thick coating of mud you could buy one of the pork chops.  And of course you get lectured about stupid things like food miles littered with nonsensical terms like organic and sustainable.

Roots isn't like that.  When you walk in the door, the first thing you notice is not the price of anything but how edible everything is and how delicious looking it is.  You've never seen Beef like it, or tasted for that matter. Fantastic poultry, great cheese, they flog booze, ice-cream, and a great selection of fruit and veg.  Absolutely bloomin' marvellous. Seriously brilliant. As far as price is concerned I reckon things are competitively priced; the few things I've bought there have been pretty good value for money.

One of the modern heresies that Roots nails is the idea that huge choice is good. It isn't. What's important is good choice.

May I politely request that you shove OX27 8SS into your search engine and that if you find it's within 13.500 miles of where you live you go there immediately.