It’s not often a major-name grocery store opens in a downtown area any more, so it’s worth noting when it does. . . especially if it’s in downtown Lake Worth, a town that, to quote the late Abba Eban, rarely misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
So you’ve got to give the city fathers (and mothers) credit for luring a new and very Art Deco-eseque Publix to just north of the Lake-Lucerne Avenue downtown strip. Somewhere in size between the spacious Lantana Publix and relatively tiny CityPlace market, the Lake Worth Publix carries all the daily staples. If you want specialty items like San Marzano tomatoes, imported cheeses and the like you’ll have to hit the Lantana market, and for a bigger selection of Hispanic foods, the Lake Worth Road Publix.
The new market does offer a limited selection of cheeses, however, including the recently launched Publix brand, plus a sizeable deli, custom-cut meat department and expanded in-house bakery, which turns out better than you might expect versions of various artisan breads. (The ciabatta rolls are a fixture in my kitchen.)
Oh, and props to the manager or whoever made the decision to sell fresh herbs in bunches instead of all scrunched up in plastic-wrapped Styrofoam trays. It’s a waste of packaging and doesn’t do the herbs much good either.
