Gourmet & Healthy in Lansdale

Founder Henry George named Chickie's Italian Deli in honor of his mother, whose recipes have inspired a menu of award-winning hoagies and other handcrafted lunch fare. Under a hanging garden of deciduous deli meats, the bustling staff hand-slices every bite to customer specifications. The street-corner eatery's hoagies pack Sarcone's bread with proteins, such as the prosciutto di parma and capicolla of the Chickie Special, buffered by provolone and veggies. The original veggie hoagie's baked eggplant, sautéed broccoli, and roasted peppers with sharp provolone represent the plant kingdom's finest exports since Carrot Top. Fresh salads, soups, and antipasto round out the array of lunch options, and a catering menu introduces the deli's signature hoagies and pepperoni platters to lunching households and businesses.

Supper Thyme's goal is to de-stress the breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours by inviting visitors to craft hearty and nutritious meals beforehand. After perusing the monthly rotating menu, customers can select an assortment of calorie-conscious, family-friendly, or organically inspired dishes and schedule an appointment to come in and assemble the ingredients. Staff members then gather all of the necessary ingredients and utensils, ensuring that each meal can be assembled in as few as 10 minutes. In between portioning out servings, visitors can enjoy a snack while listening to music or chatting with fellow attendees in the shop’s casual, low-stress kitchen environment. The meals can remain safely frozen in homes' freezers, with easy-to-follow cooking instructions allowing customers to quickly thaw and cook entrees whenever they might need to feed families, guests, or a lost restaurant reviewer.

More than 200 varieties of domestic and imported cheeses, salamis, and kielbasas vie for shelf space at International Delicatessen. The gourmet grocery store and deli's friendly staff assists customers as they navigate aisles lined with Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, German, Jewish, and Romanian specialty foodstuffs, as well as Boar’s Head deli fare. Like Ebenezer Scrooge on opposite day, the charitable staff encourages shoppers to sample bites before committing to buying. During the week, the kitchen staff whips up entrees, side salads, and desserts for ready-made meals. And in addition to their sought-after meats and cheeses, International Delicatessen stocks candies and gum, ice cream, fresh produce, and coffee.

Amid the Nutrition Station club's cheerful yellow and orange walls, coaches guide clients to slimmer versions of themselves through a wide range of nutritional and fitness programs. The center hosts group fitness classes, including boot camp and Zumba, along with weight-loss challenges, in which participants are encouraged to shed pounds through exercise and nutrition, verses removing their heaviest toe. During one-on-one nutrition sessions, cushy sofas couch nutrition counselors and clients as they discuss healthy meal plans to fit their lifestyles and weight-loss goals. The Nutrition Station's shelves are lined in Herbalife nutritional supplements, and 94 specialty smoothies sprawl across their chalkboard.

In 1911, Attilio Esposito pursued his American dream, opening a storefront butcher shop on South Ninth Street specializing in fine meats. One century later, Attilio's grandsons, Lee and Louis, still man the counter of the bustling Italian Market institution, featured on Food Network's The Best of Butcher Shops. Over the course of that century, the neighborhood shop experienced great expansion and with it a newfound commitment to environmental sustainability: Today the shop sources only naturally grown and minimally processed products.

From the beginning, the Esposito family believed in providing an impressive product above all else, cutting each portion by hand to meet the expectations of five-star restaurant chefs, home cooks, and discerning family dobermans. Additionally, the shop's organic, free-range, or Angus grass-fed beef is aged for 28 days in a climate-controlled chamber for optimal tenderness. Other products include lamb, pork, poultry, and seafood. Further sharing the knowledge their family passed down over generations, Lee and Louis also host free seminars on best practices for prepping their quality meats.

Like traditional florists, the inventive staff at FruitFlowers uses its collective eye for design to assemble a multicolored array of arrangements for special occasions, such as anniversaries, birthdays, and Valentine's Day. But rather than fill their bouquets with beautiful yet unappetizing flowers, they instead deck out their arrangements with intricately carved slices of melon, pineapple, and strawberries, many of which are dipped in chocolate, filled with marshmallow, and piled into fetching vases. FruitFlowers delivers the mouthwatering bouquets fresh, so they're best eaten right out of the deliverer's hand, much like hot-off-the-press newspapers.