Grocery Store Gets Graffiti: GONZO247’s YUMMY! 247 Exhibit at Phoenicia Specialty Foods
Across the street from Discovery Green stands Phoenicia Specialty Foods Downtown Market, a stately eight-month-old addition to the family-owned grocery store’s original Westheimer location. Inside the store, blinding white walls are lined with shelves holding ethnic foods and goods, while freshly baked pita bread puffs work their way down a conveyor belt and into an employee’s waiting hands. Walk down what employees call the “runway,” and you bump into the store’s adjoining Market Bar, an intimate brick space that offers dishes culled from Phoenicia’s own aisles, a nightclub atmosphere and art-lined walls — like artist GONZO247’s Yummy! 247 exhibition, which opened to a hip crowd Wednesday night. (“Yummy” is, not-so-coincidentally, Phoenicia’s slogan du jour.)