Wholesome Choice

Following the closure of Irvine’s long-running Persian and Middle Eastern supermarket Super Irvine, Wholesome Choice became the city’s unrivaled destination for that region’s unique ingredients and prepared foods. Located down the street from UCI, Wholesome Choice includes two main sections – a traditional grocery store occupying the right four-fifths of its footprint, and a collection of prepared food counters spanning the left fifth. Each offers compelling reasons to visit, albeit with caveats that we continue to wish were resolved.

Given our love of culinary diversity, Wholesome Choice’s “international kitchen” of prepared food counters should have been a slam dunk – when we first visited, there were Greek, Persian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Thai, and Indian counters, plus subs, burgers, a French/Persian bakery, and an authentic French-style creperie. Items we ordered from the Persian counter were trouble-free and fair values, and the crepes were excellent. But initially compelling value meals from the Korean and Chinese counters turned out to be stale and sickeningly greasy, and we say that with a fair degree of tolerance for oil.

Over the years we’ve visited, there’s been some churn in the International Kitchen section, and it’s never become as great as we know it could be. We’ve seen the Thai counter shut down entirely and other long-term disruptions of the spaces, including police tape-style blockades, apparently due to staffing problems. The once-compelling creperie, Mr. French Crepe, abruptly jumped ship to reopen in a local mall, and was replaced in early 2024 by Blu Moon Cafe, a broader breakfast, juice, tea, and smoothie shop. On the other hand, separate dessert and Middle Eastern bread bakeries seem to be flourishing, and the market’s in-house Persian counter spun out into Cafe Naderi, taking over an adjacent restaurant space that had previously seen multiple tenants cycle through.