Fresh & Easy is a simple place: pre-packaged, moderately healthy food lined up in neat aisles and framed by clean, well-designed graphics. With nearly every product under Fresh & Easy’s own brand, walking the store is its own experience, like the supermarket equivalent of IKEA. And that’s what Fresh & Easy is. The store won’t supplant trips to Trader Joe’s or any other market—but it will augment them. Careful, though: Fresh & Easy has more than enough food to absorb all of your weekly shopping budget, and the market makes sure that everything looks great: Produce clings to the wall in easy-access crates, meats sit in clean plastic trays—I’ve never seen all those honeycombed tracks of tripe look so good in my life. But it’s the more unique items that Fresh & Easy promotes, and that’s where you’ll want to look. The vegetable samosas are one of the best buys, flaky triangles that puff up and cook in only a few minutes with a taste not far off from Little India. The best find, however, is the roasted-banana gelato, a creamy pint of sweet and rich bananas turned soft by brandy and churned with a ton of brown sugar. It’s good enough to buy an armload on each visit. Of course, this is only the first wave of Fresh & Easy’s British Invasion—there’s another market planned for Lakewood, one in Long Beach and an outpost in Norwalk. Soon there’ll be roasted-banana gelato everywhere.

FRESH & EASY 5615 WOODRUFF AVE | LAKEWOOD 90713 | 562.866.2065 | FRESHANDEASY.COM

Tags: FRESH & EASY, ROASTED-BANANA GELATO, SIDES, TESCO INVASION