Peaches Visits LA's Erewhon 🍑

G-Morning 🍑 This is Andrew's Apples. Today we welcome back our resident lady-in-chief/editrix, Maggie aka Peaches. She just returned from a visit to the City of Angels where she did it up. Here she is:

My trip to LA was off to a rollicking start. In just two days, I’d managed to deepen my skin 4 swatches darker than when I’d arrived, drink a matcha so strong it made me hurl in the café bathroom, and have a devastating conversation with an old flame over bottomless hot pot in Pasadena. And aside from heading to Malibu to bat my eyelashes at the surf crowd, I had just one KPI left on my agenda: a pilgrimage to Erewhon.

🧢 Patrons at a glance. I’d expected Erewhon to be an orgy of Vice bros, marriageable Pilates instructors, and post-op, chin-wrapped divorceés and their freshly permed bichon frisés. But the patronage was actually pretty nondescript. Birkenstock Dads in faded Dodgers caps. Perma-lashed Kardashian imitators chatting up the staff. Even a few Latin day workers on their lunch breaks. Granted, I'd chosen the Erewhon Venice Beach as my specimen, but I was heartened to see such a middle-of-the-road crowd. The staff was friendly and approachable. And apart from this one lady who breathed down my neck until I finished comparing organic cotton and hemp-based tampons, I only fielded three stop-and-greets from employees, who had every right to assume I was shoplifting given how pokily I was ambling the aisles.

🛍️ Erewhon: In Stock Now. A quick list of some of the merchandise I spotted on the shelves, all of which elicited an eyeroll from me:

• Elissa's Thyroid Juice (house made).

• Pain de Mie Hot Dog and Hamburger Buns (house made)

• Optimist Botanicals' distilled non-alcoholic spirits, shelved next to hottie-owned Kin Euphorics. Notable ingredients: Lapsang souchong. Jasmine. Valencia orange. Angelica root. Bergamot. Clove.

• Activated Maca Mesquite Walnuts by waning wellness brand Moon Juice

• Halle Berry's two-bit brand of dog tinctures HappyBond, a "wellness collaboration" with friend, spin guru, and “bioscientist,” a blonde lady I didn’t write down the name of.

• Liquid Death, a sparkling water tallboy that looks like Four Loco. This refreshment is "armed with agave nectar and designed to murder your thirst.”

• Anxie-T, an "herbal support" against stress that contains Ashwagandha, Gaba, Kava Kava, theobromine, and L-Theanine. Note: I have used Kava Kava and it works for me as a mild sedative, while it does nothing for a friend of mine. If you're going to use herbs, use them in isolation—highly discourage anyone from popping pills or dropping drops that contain a whole bouquet of one-fits-all “allies.”

• Anima Mundi Apothecary's “Dream Sleep Aid-Third Eye Tonic-Lucid Dreaming Elixir." Also their "Euphoria Joy, Ecstasy & Bliss Aphrodisiac Elixir," which is supposed to "tone your reproductive organs" (???)

🥜 Erewhon in a nutshell. Artificial product segmentation is the succor of consumer economies, and Erewhon’s merchandisers are segmentation extremists. Sure, there are cytological distinctions to be drawn between Adriatic and Brown Turkey figs—but don't be that idiot swindled by snake oil descriptors like “Adaptogenic" trail mix and “Activated Dulse & Vinegar Almonds.” Do you know what "activated" means in Moon Juice-speak? It means, "we left those babies in a bath of water and salt ‘til they pruned—so your tummy doesn't hurt." That's it. That said, if I were loaded, I’d absolutely pay $15 for nut salad with a nice mouthfeel to it. And by "mouthfeel" I mean the joy I’d derive from saying to my butler: "Want to split a bag of activated dulse and vinegar almonds with me?”, not the actual sensation of nuts in my mouth.

🥖 Erewhon at its best: Olive Oil Impresario. I have probably not had actually-good olive oil since I was 6 years old on a rare family Eurotrip (we are Jersey Shore people) to Nice, France. One of my earliest food memories: carafe of olive oil; warm, linen-swaddled bread in a straw bassinet; my father's hand swabbing a loaf in what looked like liquid gold and handing it to me to taste. Divine.

The jig is far from up on the olive oil fraud, yet time and time again I naively attempt to covet a bottle of the good stuff at my local Lincoln Market. I've been coached by blogs, friends, and influencers on the various labels I should be looking for to verify authenticity, but each time I take my little bottle home to taste I find it smacks thinly of sawdust and despair.

Erewhon's most redemptive achievement—and, in my eyes, a niche it could profitably exploit—is serving as an EVOO curator in a world hard-pressed to make this staple more accessible (prices withstanding). Their selection glows on three fronts: provenance (Greece, Italy), process (picked early, pressed tout de suite), and the ingredients themselves (NO SEED OILS). If it weren't for TSA's liquid limit, I would've coughed up $42 for a bottle in two shakes. Suffice to say, if there’s any department where Erewhon deserves a shot, its dat premio E-V-O-O.

After polishing off my little thing of mango and Brown Turkey Figs in the shaded dining bungalow I walked down to Venice Beach. I surveyed the human circus through rose-tinted sunglasses: There goes a guy in a t-shirt that says “AMBITION IS MY FUEL.” There goes another guy in one that says “HARVARD,” whose muscles are so exquisitely articulated it seems he used his degree to chisel all 650+ of them with cast-iron precision. And here comes a chunkier fellow in a suit jacket and jeans. He waddles up to the balustrade, phone to ear, and says “Just because they got the script doesn’t mean they read it.” Naturally.

Reflecting on my pilgrimage, I’m neither indignated nor inspired. Erewhon fever seems to be a pretty natural, even inevitable, continental development—another American sanctuary for we squishy humans who, as its namesake predicted, are both terrorized and enamored by machines.

And alongside the perfectly hewn joggers and the perfectly distressed long-boarders and the perfectly proportioned Alo junkies are the tents, the drunks, the legions of Venice Beach’s bedraggled unfortunates. The dudes abide, and while they could use a little more meat on their bones, when I squint to get a good look they seem just as cut as Mr. Harvard.

How about them Peaches? Hit me with any comments or questions.

Your friends,

Maggie🍑 & Andrew🍎

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