Eurofind

Last Friday I had a chance to visit the Eurofood Depot, which I learned about a few weeks ago from Caron Golden’s blog. I’m a sucker for this sort of find: the gem tucked away in a most unlikely location, in this case a sterile stretch of Lusk Boulevard (a few blocks north of Mira Mesa Boulevard) that you’d expect to be inhabited only by geekish gnomes surviving on Diet Coke and junk food.  You have to call or get on an e-mail list to find out when the Depot’s “showroom” will be open to the public.

The showroom is located in the back of the building, where giant metal garage doors were opened to admit the air and light on the morning of my visit . That felt like a San Diego touch. But the rest of the place transported me to France. A long glass display case was crammed with tempting cheeses, sausages, mousses, smoked meats, and pates. Pretty free-standing shelves, some topped with bright Provencal table linens, showed off more of the bounty: hazelnut, walnut,and grapeseed oils; dried mushrooms; exotic mustards (blackcurrant Dijon!); duckfat; Costco-sized jars of cornichons; flageolets; couscous; Swiss and Belgian chocolate, and more. Both the owners, Fabien Faucheux and Franck Danglard, were on-hand, welcoming and energetic. Fabien, a food-industry veteran, seemed proud of the fact that all his offerings were priced well below what they cost at Whole Foods (if Whole Foods even carries them).  I had the sense that offering the retail hours (if limited ones) was something of a gift to the local foodie community, as the plan is for the main thrust of the business to develop online.

The Eurofood Depot website, though still under construction, already lists close to 300 products. It’s also a good place to sign up for the e-mail notices of when the showroom will be open. For this week, at least, those hours will be Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.