Fresh Farms on Golf Road in Niles

Finally the long-awaited HUGE Fresh Farms is opening on Golf Road about a block and a half east of Milwaukee Ave in Niles.
'The opening is Wednesday September 23 (Hey! That's tomorrow!) at the strange hour of 1 p.m. See you there! --Joy

8203 W Golf Rd.
Niles, IL 60714

Thanks for the tip, Joy.
I had a work outing this evening on the North Shore and took the opportunity to visit the new store on my way home at a late (8:45ish), uncrowded hour. Two of my coworkers accompanied me, one a Touhy store vet like me and the other a complete newbie.
We had a really fun time. My main take-away: This is substantially similar to the Touhy store.

First, this is a huge space. The ceilings are high, the aisles are wide, the counters are spacious.
There's a patio set up in front with gas fire pits and nice seating. You can plan on a pleasant lunch here.
The main entrance leads to the produce section just like Touhy with grapes & berries right up front. The selection seemed a bit broader than Touhy with fresh mangosteens ($6 or 7/lb and bags of 6-8 or so, I think) and banana leaves that I don't recall seeing in South Niles. A hard right at the entrance hits the juice bar and then a new, first-for-me tea bar which not surprisingly didn't seem open as this late hour on opening night.

Capping produce is seafood, just like the other Niles store. This seemed to be just about the same as Touhy.

Continuing forward, you'll reach the deli. This seems nicer but maybe just newer. I am pretty sure that it is smaller than the Touhy store. My Ukrainian coworker pointed out the smaller smoked fish case and I have to agree.

Sausages, meats, dairy and poultry seemed the same as Touhy.

The North-West corner of the store is the bakery. I don't go for sweets but the cakes and tarts looked very pretty. I'm sure they won't disappoint. The bakers will enjoy a large, open space.

I found elderflower (shokata) Fanta which has been on my seek list for a while.
There are a lot of Eastern European beers I wasn't familiar with available.
We had quite the laugh at the Indiana Jones beers, you'll know them when you seem them.

The aisles seem to have the same products and similar layout to Touhy. More room, though.

Brendan, you nailed it. My impression was that the new Golf Road store is a copy of the Touhy store. It does seem a bit smaller but not small.

There is a sushi stand with the sushi master out in front speaking to the customers.

There is a hot food take-away counter towards the front that had good chicken vesuvio with peas and greek potatoes -- but terrible brussells sprouts. There are a few tables and chairs inside near the adjacent juice bar -- a good place to park an elder or crabby spouse while you shop.

The fresh fish counter looked great.

The center-of-the-store has all the features of Touhy yet scaled down maybe 25 percent, we guessed. Big selection of ethnic foods in the middle shelves as would be expected. The aisle with giant bags of rice, beans etc. stacked on pallets was there. Aisles with all sorts of ethnic frozen foods in beautiful reach-in freezers.

The bakery is very nice sized but it looks like it is still getting up and running.

The one thing that struck me was the variety of Asian veggies and fruits. Now that I think about it, all of these are available at Touhy store too but I think that a Fresh Farms at this location might give H-mart a run for its money.

BrendanR wrote:Thanks for the tip, Joy.
I had a work outing this evening on the North Shore and took the opportunity to visit the new store on my way home at a late (8:45ish), uncrowded hour. Two of my coworkers accompanied me, one a Touhy store vet like me and the other a complete newbie.
We had a really fun time. My main take-away: This is substantially similar to the Touhy store.

I had my maiden at Golf yesterday. I would not say Touhy, I would say Wheeling. The store, right down to the facade brick and aisle signs, is a mimic of Wheeling. The inventory and order of things skews much more towards Wheeling than Touhy, including the prepared foods, choice selection of smoked fish, amount of sour creams and types of bread in the bakery. Overall, as the noted above, there seems little reason to visit this store over Wheeling beyond factoring in distance to where you are, although as I saw, there's a few things here and there re: this location, Golf, that probably make it worse than Wheeling.

The one thing that I noted different from any Fresh Farms was this little tea bar set way in a corner. I did not try, so I cannot speak to how it adds to the scene.

Speaking of tea bar/far away corner, the set up of some stuff is rather odd. Like I say, the tea is so far off the main area that unless you're going to the loo, which is how I found it, you'll probably miss it. But also in that area are the sushi, the ice cream, and the prepared foods. The prepared salads are very much in the Russian mien, Korean carrot, eggplant puree, etc. There are a lot of grain salads at Touhy that my wife likes that were not here, is just the newness? The steam table offerings were much more like Wheeling, as noted, but with less stuff overall; Wheeling has a lot of things, blintzes, etc. like on top of the counter. Both Wheeling and Golf have all these salmon presentations that Touhy does not.

Only Touhy has the vaunted Serbian pastries--probably the single best reason to visit Touhy! Also did not see the flat bread lagna (sp?) at Golf, the ones frequently sampled at Touhy. Like I say, more Eastern European types vs. Greek types when it came to bread.

It would take serious diligence to know for sure the differences between produce, even through the original, Devon, into the mix, but the variety on Sunday was huge ranging from fresh dates to amaranth to breadfruit to god knows what. Very impressive in a huge range.

Like all Fresh Farms but for Devon, the checkout process is superb. All other grocery chains should take lessons here.

I also visited the new store on Sunday. I liked it overall, although I didn't send a lot of tie going through the aisles. My only complaint is that the deli section has a much smaller selection than the Touhy flagship. The salami (or do you say salumi) selection is smaller and the cheese selection barely covers the basics. They don't even sell a super sharp cheddar, although the feta selection seems more or less on par with Touhy. The new prepared foods section at Touhy is much larger than Golf Road as well.

Although I liked the store, I don't think I'll be shopping there all that much, since Touhy is closer to me and suits my needs perfectly.