Another so-so experience at Fairway

I returned to Fairway's new store in Paramus this morning armed with a $10 off coupon on a purchase of $100, but not with a calculator that could have helped me hit the bull's-eye.

Many people crow about Fairway's competitive pricing, but I have yet to see definitive proof of that. True, herbicide-free Campari tomatoes, at two pounds for $5, are 49 cents cheaper than Costco. Murray's free-roaming, drug-free chicken was $1.69 a pound for leg quarters with the skin on to $2.39 a pound for a whole chicken, but wings were still priced inexplicably at $2.69 a pound. I looked and looked and asked in vain at the meat counter for antibiotic- and hormone-free pork.

I bought three bottles of Fairway's marinara sauce for $2.99 each, a great price for a great bottled sauce, but noticed the ingredients were the same for Fairway spaghetti sauce. (By the way, I always added a can of anchovies with its oil to the Fairway sauce for some extra oomph without the taste of the fish, which dissolves completely.) And I got some beautiful whole whiting for $3.99 a pound that I plan to bake tonight. There's nothing like the sweet flesh of these little fish.

I usually buy egg beaters at Costco (four small cartons), but forgot to on my last trip. So I picked up a quart of the original Egg Beaters for $5.89, and have no idea if that is a good  price.

In the end, though, I got $10 off my total of $112.94, bringing it down to $102.94, and my cash rebate American Express Blue card will refund another 5 percent of the total. But the bottle of Fairway balsamic vinegar I bought for $3.19 broke on my granite counter top when I set the bag down, because the helpful but inept Fairway packer just put it into a flimsy plastic bag with the bottles of pasta sauce and no padding.