Tales of the FoodBorg: Does this mean the Heights is now a "food desert".

Revival Market, a very upscale fresh market/diner in the Heights area is "repositioning" itself to be more of a traditional diner, and less a retail market.

Revival Market repositions itself with restaurant first, market second. Greg Morago, HoustonChronicle.com ($$$)

(Granted, the cost per month for this article is still cheaper than almost anything you could buy at Revival)

Last month, Revival Market expanded its hours to accommodate dinner service. Its kitchen now offers all-day service for breakfast, lunch and dinner daily (except Monday, when dinner is not served). The aisles that held a variety of produce and artisan foods are gone to make way for more café tables and banquette seating.

While I've only been there once or twice, I always enjoyed breakfast at Revival when I did visit and I (usually) found one or two things to try that I liked.  Their pimento cheese spread, for example, is out of this world good.

The staff was usually friendly and, despite it's pretentious reputation, the patrons were typically fairly nice and it made for a good Saturday morning drive into town.  The food there is good and the butcher's counter, while pricey, was always full of tasty dead, carved, animals. It also had been around long enough that the FoodBorg had long since abandoned this place for newer (although not necessarily greener) pastures.

Now it appears that the market is, largely, going away.  This is horrible news for Heights residents who, if I understand the fuzzy definition of "food deserts" correctly, appear to be now living in one.

Look at the map below:

Heights proper with grocery stores

It is very clear the Heights now has a very large geographic area where the purchase of farm-fresh, vegetarian-fed, cage-free, organic, hormone-free eggs from chickens massaged daily by Tibetan Monks brought over on sustainable sail-yachts and paid a living wage is now ONLY possible via either the automobile or (horrors) hopping on a bus with the unwashed.

So, is this a 'food desert' then?

Or no?

The problem is that the definition of a 'food desert' is mercurial and doesn't appear to have much basis in actual fact.  To argue that one of the most affluent neighborhoods in Central Houston is a 'food desert' using much the same criteria one uses to categorize economically depressed neighborhoods is ridiculous of course.  But that won't stop those who tend to freak out about such things from plowing ahead.

The reason the Heights is NOT a food desert and other areas are seems only delineated by the fact that the ruling and unproductive classes feel the poorer neighborhoods are not engaging in behaviors with which they agree.

Food deserts, like public transportation, are for 'those people' who are viewed as being incapable of making the choices of their betters absent some form of central control.

But if it's not all about control, and gaining an economic advantage off of the opportunities that come from that control, then large parts of the Houston Heights really are a food desert and SOMETHING! Must be done.

What I would suggest is dropping the idea of food deserts altogether and work on implementing policies that lift all Houstonians, not just ones who happen to live in areas where the upper-crust view disparagingly.