Not your mother’s health food co-op.Devore’s Good Food, a neighborhood gem too often obscured by the mammoth shadow cast by Newport Market across the street, offers food you can truly feel good about. Produce is always organic and locally grown when in season. The shop is locally owned. And for those of us who are too busy/lazy/inept to feed ourselves, Devore’s has a mountain of delicious prepared foods, including fully constructed but uncooked casseroles, pizzas, and pies (both sweet and savory) you can pop in the oven and pass off as home-cooking, as well as soups, wraps, quiches, salads, and other ready-to-eat meals in individual and family-sized portions.
I’ll admit that when I first darkened Devore’s doorstep, I was skeptical. If you were raised in a hippie commune in the ’70s and spent your formative years crawling around among barrels of bulk grain in the food co-op that your mother helped found, you’d immediately see-and smell-red flags everywhere. Before you even enter, the old picnic tables on the worn wooden porch under a thatched awning and, particularly, the bulletin board by the front door displaying flyers for folk festivals, homeopathic healers, and lectures like “Be Kind to Your Colon” set off alarms. (No mom, this wheat gluten doesn’t taste like chicken!) That distinct whiff of damp cardboard, soil, carrot greens, and freshly cut Camembert overcomes you as you walk the produce aisles and past the cheese counter. (Um, this “candy” looks suspiciously like dried apricots.) But as you make your way to the coolers in the back room brimming with attractive options, that visceral urge to flee subsides, and you realize that this isn’t your mother’s health food.
