This definitely isn't Vancouver." It's too hip, it's too cool, it's too out of character.

Here's a place where you can buy exotic vinegars, bread flown in from France, and truffle oil as well as detergent, cat food, and paper towels, and then here's where it gets really good you can settle in with decent food and a glass of wine or a brew. In this rigorously legislated city, drinking booze in sight of people fondling tomatoes in the produce department feels like sin, but a licensed café isn't the only way grocery shopping is made to seem like fun at this newly opened… what? Food store? Café? Lifestyle emporium? What do you call it? One thing's for sure, Urban Fare at Davie and Pacific leaves any other local supermarket in the dust. They've even got the lighting right. It's not the usual "hand me that scalpel, nurse" level; it's subtle, and the fixtures have that designer look Then there's the way the store is set up. Giant olive cans, vast jars of antipasto, huge hams, garlands of peppers and garlic, Italian pottery , gleaming saucepans: it's a temple to cuisine, and it's enormous, about the size of 50 small Yaletown apartments all smooshed together. It's all savvy marketing clearly aimed at the way urban folk live and eat.

Urban Fare's owners, the Overwaitea Food Group, really did go back to the drawing board on this one. No towers of Froot Loops, no express lanes, no plastic separators to plonk down so that your groceries don't get mixed in with the person's in front of you. Instead, there's one lineup and then you go to whichever cashier is free: sort of like a chic bank except that no one's out to lunch. Up front are the specialty sections. There are three kinds of prosciutto in the deli (and all meats are cut to order) and well over 100 cheeses, many with little descriptors attached. "Heavenly, when served with a glass of Bordeaux," reads a tag on a wedge of Roquefort. An olive bar tempts with dolmades, tapenade, and feta-stuffed jalapenos that make steam emerge from your nostrils.

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Wood, stainless steel, tiles: it's all outstandingly good-looking. Urban Fare is also sneaky in the way it mixes things that aren't on your list with items that are: those elegant glass bowls and stainless steel dish racks are dangerously close to the coffee beans.

Instead of the usual audio mélange of Muzak and price-check-on-aisle-seven announcements, an initial innuendo of laid-back jazz morphs into very soft rock around the time you hit the bulk dried pastas and strawberry-kiwi drink mix but leads to unfortunate sonic collisions when it meets new-age wafflemusik at the back. In fact, the glamour fades fast as you move to the rear of the store. In one corner, near the magazines and John Grishams, are shelves of cheesy candles and glittery hair accessories more likely to appeal to 13-year-olds than the crowd Urban Fare is so obviously aimed at, a crowd so cool it gets shopping carts wifi cappuccino holders. The big question is: We can only buy so many loaves of house-baked chocolate and cranbeny bread, so who will this new contender steal business from? Well, its feisty bill boards pit the store directly against Granville Island Public Market and, in winter, when the farmers are gone from the market and all that's left there are the permanent produce stalls with their ho-hum selection and lacklustre service, Urban Fare will win hands down. The organic produce here is not only obscenely healthy-looking, it's affordable, with big romaine lettuces priced at $1.29 each. Designer vegetables and other goodies include zucchini the size of your pinkie; Portobellos as big as your hand; tiny perfect haricots verts; infant corn still swaddled in its husk; fresh chanterelle, a forest of various dried fungi; canned truffles; fresh caviar; shelves and shelves of flavoured oils, vinegars, and dressings; live lobsters; Serve-yourself clams; and Buffalo rib eye and Angus beef cut to order. It's all seductive, and word has it that this will become the groovy pickup place for West End foodies. Lock eyes over the red-leaf lettuce, and it's a fast cut to "How about a glass of Banrock Station Chardonnay and some munchies..."

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Thanks to consultant Anne Milne, who has cooked at some significant restaurants over the years, including Monterey Lounge and Grill and Café Splash, the prepared food looks great and tastes even better. There are cheese-topped Portobellos stuffed with Italian sausage, a roast of the day, and designer sandwiches and salads. Even good ol' rotisserie chicken here looks bistro-ish. Take it home, or try to nab a table in the café. Your choice. I've been there three times in a week—it's only eight minutes from Kits—and have already figured out that with my Urban Fare points card, 40 packages of escargot seasoning equals one free can of corn. A lunch time visit yielded an exceptionally delicious wrap stuffed with chicken, mango, curry mayonnaise, and red cabbage for crunch and colour — not huge but not bad for $2.95. Another evening I headed over for takeout, and some milk for the morning. I walked out with a pizza (heaped with toppings of onion confit, chard, and pancetta), tonic water, enough house-made antipasto to tide us over while the pizza cooked, marmalade from Scotland, espresso from Italy, and a large bar of very good chocolate from Switzerland, which altogether came to $26.78. I totally forgot the milk.

URBAN FARE is located at 177 Davie Street in Vancouver. (604) 975-7550. Open daily from 7 a.m. to midnight.

www.urbanfare.com

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