Grocery shopping at the Syracuse Real Food Co-Op, located at 618 Kensington Rd., allows you to help the community while buying locally grown produce and fresh take-out meals.

A food co-op is a collectively owned grocery store with a focus on natural foods that are often locally sourced. The Syracuse Real Food Co-Op’s website lists its local farmers and producers, such as Harvest Home Organics and Ithaca Soy, who supply the store.

The co-op is mostly member-run. After paying a one-time fee, members are required to provide some sort of service — like working a few hours in the store — in exchange for benefits such as discounts.

Still, the friendly staff greeted us with a warm smile when we walked in the door, and were attentive and helpful in finding everything I needed.

The co-op has produce that shoppers rarely get to see, including fresh turmeric and burdock root, and huge packages of tempeh and tofu. Even the bulk food section will rock your world. It has everything from granola to sesame seeds to dried shiitake mushrooms.

To top it off, it’s way cheaper than your average supermarket.

The store offered free samples of homemade Super Black Bean Dip paired with chili-lime tortilla chips on the day we visited. The mass-produced chips were perfectly salty with a sweet tang of lime. Many lime-flavored tortilla chips taste artificial, but this wasn’t the case with this brand.

The dip was flavored pungently with lemon and peppered with feta cheese. The lemon’s acidity went nicely with the meatiness of the beans and saltiness of the feta cheese.

The samples were so good that we ended up buying a bag of chips and a container of dip.

If offering free samples isn’t enticing enough, the co-op has a great take-out section: soups, sandwiches, salads, sushi, noodle bowls, cupcakes, muffins, coffee and dips of all kinds. The list goes on. Vegans, pescatarians and carnivores will all be able to find something among the co-op’s diverse options.

Take-out items are priced by the pound, with every container weighing a different amount. In other words, you can get a decent amount of food for cheap.

We bought several small containers of different items.

The first was vegan chicken salad. I am not a vegan, but I cook with soy products often and know how hard it is to make a non-chicken salad taste even remotely like chicken, and this version was pretty good. The “meat” of the salad was textured vegetable protein (TVP) combined with a decent amount of vegan mayonnaise, carrot, celery, sundried tomatoes and lemon juice. It made for a hearty salad that was both crunchy and creamy.

We also got a small container of the barbeque tofu. To me, barbeque should taste sweet and spicy, but this tofu was much too sweet — it masked every other flavor. I could taste only a hint of barbeque. I did detect some smokiness, which I enjoyed, but I wished there was more. Still, the dish’s biggest downfall was the dry tofu.

However, one of the best parts of the take-out bar at the co-op is the vast array of dips and spreads. There is everything from guacamole to salsa to baba ganoush. I tried the roasted red pepper hummus. The hummus delivered on its title, tasting of pure chickpeas, tahini and red bell pepper. It was creamy and had a nice spice after each bite. Although I wish the hummus had been smoother, it was still delicious.

If you’re going to get one thing from the co-op — get the bread.

There are several different kinds available, like focaccia and baguette, which are baked fresh and delivered to the store daily. We bought a whole wheat loaf for $4.29. It was made with whole wheat flour, walnuts and flax. The loaf was hearty, dense and moist, with lots of seeds for added texture. Essentially, it was everything you could want from whole wheat bread.

Unlike a lot of co-ops, this one doesn’t have a dining area. It’s a little inconvenient, but as long as you aren’t planning on eating there, it’s fine.

At the co-op you can get a portable, tasty meal while doing something even more important at the same time: supporting local business.

Published on February 5, 2013 at 10:28 pm

Contact Riddley: rsgemper@syr.edu