Alex C.
Yelp
It seems weird to review a grocery store, especially a branch of one that literally EVERYONE has been to. But this location is... well let's just say special. Inside you'll find the usual Trader Joe's stuff at the usual Trader Joe's prices, but this one gets four, rather than five, stars, because holy lord it can be a total and complain pain in the ass!
You know those stock footage videos they always show of a sea of people in some random city in China or India when discussing how the country has something like 1.4 billion people? This Trader Joe's is the grocery store version of that. Why, you may ask? Well, three reasons. First, the store sits smack in the middle of a very busy part of Hillcrest and, product-wise, caters very well to the surrounding market. As popular as any Trader Joe's is, this creates a problem, regardless of reasons number two and three. But making things worse, this store is tiny. Really, really tiny. Seriously, I'd be surprised if it has half the square footage of most other Trader Joe's. (Trader Joe'ses? What the hell is the plural of Trader Joe's?) And inside that tiny foot print are all of the products, employees, registers, and customers that you would find in any other location, just squished together like one of those billion people videos. It gets so crowded that the fact of it being crowded turns into an inevitable topic of conversation between shoppers, which is how I met one of my ex-girlfriends in the cheese aisle. (Yes, seriously. We dated for a year.)
OK, so it's crowded, I'm sure you get it. Well so what, you might ask -- you park, you deal with the store, and you leave, right? Oh no, because then there is reason number three -- the parking lot. It's just terrible. Both coming and going can be a complete flip of the coin as to whether it will be easy or a royal pain in your ass. Avoiding the busiest hours always helps, but the ingress and egress can be brutal. Its location in the very back corner of a very busy strip mall, right next door to a Ralphs, does not help, nor does the fractured design of the parking lot. In the end, it always feels good to make that left turn on University Ave., knowing that you've left the chaos behind you.
OK, so that was a lot to write about a chain grocery store, but I thought it best to give fair warning that, while the products, prices, etc. are what you would expect, this is not your usual Trader Joes. You've been warned. Happy Shopping.