There are people who travel for art, for architecture, for the vague promise of self-improvement. And then there are those of us who cross borders for a bag of frozen orange chicken and a seasoning blend that tastes like it was engineered in a lab designed to make restraint impossible.

I fall into the latter camp. Not casually, not ironically. I am, for better or worse, a food person in the fullest sense. I cook the way some people scroll, constantly and a little compulsively, chasing flavours, tinkering, adjusting, tasting again. The kitchen is where I spend my time and attention, which is probably why a grocery store managed to get this far under my skin.

For the past few years, any trip south has followed a familiar rhythm. Land, check in, and then, with a kind of low-grade urgency, locate the nearest Trader Joe’s. Boston, New York, a quiet stretch of Vermont, even Syracuse in the summer, it didn’t matter. The store was the destination, everything else a supporting act. I would go in with a list and leave with something closer to a haul: Mandarin Orange Chicken, a block of Unexpected Cheddar, a sunscreen that whispers luxury while costing less than lunch, dark chocolate peanut butter cups that make a convincing case against moderation, and at least two jars of Crunchy Chili Onion because one is never enough.

It’s the seasonings, though, that first pulled me in. Onion salt that somehow tastes fuller than the sum of its parts. A salmon rub that makes you feel like you know what you’re doing. These are not pantry staples so much as quiet little victories, the kind that make a weeknight dinner feel like you meant it.

I haven’t been back in a while. Call it a principled absence, or just fatigue with You Know Who. Either way, the distance has done nothing to dull the appetite. If anything, it’s sharpened it into something closer to ritual. In the absence of the real thing, I’ve taken to following Trader Joe’s Talia, who posts a steady stream of new and returning products with the calm authority of someone who understands exactly what’s at stake. I don’t know her, she doesn’t know me, and yet there I am, watching updates about freezer aisle arrivals as if they were breaking news.

Friends, meanwhile, act as intermediaries, sending care packages like culinary smugglers. Tote bags arrive like postcards from a place I can’t quite visit. Cards too, so I can pass the obsession along, neatly wrapped, to other people in my life.

The bags deserve their own paragraph. They are, objectively, just reusable grocery bags. And yet. The canvas ones, the state-specific designs, the now-infamous blue tote that has somehow become a status object oceans away. There’s a thrill in collecting them that feels both harmless and slightly absurd. I tell myself I’ll keep it under control. Nobody needs that many reusable bags. This is true. It does not change anything.

What makes the whole operation so effective is how little it feels like one. Trader Joe’s doesn’t present itself as a system. It feels like a discovery. The stores are cozy in a way that suggests intention without revealing it. The staff are unhurried, almost disarmingly pleasant. The packaging looks like it was designed by a group of people who were told to have fun and, for once, actually did. Nothing matches, and that’s the point.

And then there’s the layout, which seems engineered to slow you down just enough to notice things you weren’t looking for. Products tucked over low freezers, snacks hiding in plain sight, a constant sense that you might miss something good if you rush. It turns shopping into a kind of low-stakes scavenger hunt, one where the prize is usually edible and often excellent.

From a distance, it’s easy to see the machinery at work. Private label everything. Keep prices low. Rotate products just enough to keep people slightly off balance. Create scarcity without ever calling it that. It’s smart, almost ruthlessly so. And yet, standing in the aisle with a basket that’s getting heavier by the minute, it doesn’t feel like strategy. It feels like luck.

Maybe that’s the trick.

For now, I’m on the outside looking in, sustained by care packages, TikTok updates, and a growing collection of bags I insist I don’t need. One day, when the circumstances shift and the border feels less like a line I’ve drawn myself, I’ll go back. I’ll walk in, grab a cart, and pretend this is all perfectly normal.

Until then, the craving holds.