Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods - it's a supermarket, for posh people!

You would not believe how excited the denizens of Kensington were in early June when Whole Foods opened. There were queues to get in, scrums over the biscotti and literally thousands of yummy mummies with Anya Hindmarch ethical bags and Jimmy Choo flats, desperate to talk about nanny problems and work-life balance over falafel.

I sort of see the excitement: Whole Foods, split over three floors, is a veritable temple of consumerism, albeit an extremely refined ten-quid-for-some-air-dried-ham consumerism. In the States, smug macrobiotic celebs like Gwyneth Paltrow, Brangelina and Madonna get their weekly rations there and I can imagine Whole Foods Kensington attracting oligarchs and A-listers too.

On the ground floor, there's a deli, plus a mound of cantaloupes, a florist, various expensive foods, people handing out cheese, a pile of Icelandic bottled water and a stack of Veuve Cliquot bottles. Oh, and some queues. I probably should have mentioned them earlier, as in the first week of the store being open, the queues took up a quarter of the ground floor. There was even a sign up indicating how long you could expect to queue for the pleasure of being charged extortionate prices for (fairly readily-available, these days) organic food.

The second-floor reminded me of the world's most expensive service station. There are various 'bars' (Oyster bar, sushi bar... juice bar) and lots of seating. Oddly, though, you can't eat from the 'bars' unless you are sitting at the 'bars'. "So what's all this seating for?" I asked a flunky. She pointed mutely at the take-away shelves. "So, you can eat your takeaway food here, but not the food that's served here?" She smiled grimly in reply.

There's also a basement. God knows what they have down there. Perhaps some authentic artisan peasants chained up and forced at gunpoint to make high-quality individually fashioned loaves in the shape of this season's It-handbags... darling, the mini-Paddington is just just perfect for a dinner party!