Esh’s

Alot of their food is expired or about to be. Their produce is never fresh ans the meat looks old and brown.

Esh’s is a remarkable store. But only the most serious, or desperate, or enterprising, or adventurous will enter its doors. The store is set back from the street in a worn area of Evans, flanked in a way to suggest it is a center of pained mediocrity. But mediocre it is not! Esh’s seems to thrive on dated products and end of lots. You will find a few familiar foods. But you will also find unfamiliar, strange, exotic foods calling out to you in strange tongues: Indian, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Caribbean.
The last visit we picked up some Reed avocados. Most grocers would call these «really large Hass,» but they would be wrong. There are more varieties of fruits and vegetables than most produce managers are aware of. In addition to what I am certain were Reed, on this day we also found some avocados from Mission (see missionpro dot com) who provide what are arguably some of the best Hass avocados available. We learned that there are sub-​varieties of Hass, such as Flor Loca and Aventajada. Although I do not know which sub-​varieties these Mission avocados were, they reminded me of the California avocados of several decades ago when, I believe, California was able to keep up with the United States avocado demand without the need for foreign imports.
We also picked up some curry, British mustard, canned okra, exotic teas that seem to have had poor marketing but whose quality is as good as any other tea. We decided to take a chance with the callaloo. We had no idea what that was, which made it all the more irresistible to me. I’m a food experimenter, so we tried it. Well, okay, it wasn’t so great; I had to add a number of extras to it, but once I did, it was passable. Everyone liked it and it was fun to try it. Visit Esh’s, listen to the music, chat with the clerks, and use your culinary imagination.
I don’t think Evans has a food tax. So if you live in Greeley, and are already paying property tax, tax on water, electric, gas, and other services, tax on virtually everything you buy in the city, and you would like to be able to eat in peace without the government taxing you for that, too, you might go to Evans for at least some of your groceries. We leave Esh’s with a full cart, having paid less than half of what we pay for a cart-​load of food in Greeley.
People have to eat. Food shouldn’t be taxed. Next: the Greeley Air Tax. Its purpose: bridge renovation. That makes as much as using the food tax for road repairs and school bonds for summer lunches. Those politicians are just wacko.