A haven from chaos

Some 28,000 people signed up for loyalty cards before the store opened. I’m sorry, but you couldn’t get 28,000 people to sign up for a Red Sox loyalty card right now.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but this grocery store has become, in two weeks, the biggest cultural/tourist/commercial attraction in Massachusetts, bigger than any of the grand museums of Boston. And consider that Wegmans sits far from any highway in a little outpost called Northborough, which, oddly enough, is located just west of nowhere.

But just as I was about to declare us an uncivilized collection of lemmings, no better than, say, Georgia or Texas, I noticed something odd around the dry-aged meat locker and the day boat fish counter.

Shoppers were smiling. They were happy. They didn’t even seem to mind the fact they were banging their carts into one another because there was barely a square inch of open space to maneuver. And that’s when it all started coming together for me.

At one level, this Wegmans caters to our last acceptable vice, which is food. You can’t smoke these days. You’re not supposed to drink to excess. It’s socially unacceptable to drive too fast. Even television is starting to get a bad rap.

But we can still eat. The Food Network is all the rage. Chefs are the new celebrities. Cookbooks fly off the shelves. Restaurants, even exquisitely mediocre ones, pack in diners night after night.

And Wegmans brings all this together in grand fashion, with its own burrito maker, gourmet coffee shop, a comfort food bar with baked chicken, Indian food bars, dim sum, Thai, a wokery, freshly baked pizzas, and a little restaurant called The Food Bar that churns out seared scallops that look like they could be served at L’Espalier.

Then there’s the charcuterie and the array of doughnuts, muffins, bagels, and breads made in the store, and the fish case with every creature that’s ever swum in our seas and a cheese shop as big as a CVS.