Los Angeles Grocery Store is Turning Into a Stage for Egg Stories Tonight
A grocery store in Los Angeles is preparing for an unusual Sunday evening. Instead of focusing entirely on shopping, Fresco Community Market in Highland Park will host a gathering where eggs become the inspiration for stories, essays, and poetry.
The event, called Stories In-Store: Egg, is scheduled for Sunday, October 18, 2026, at 7:30 p.m. It brings together KCRW’s Good Food and Grocery Goblin for an evening that combines culinary culture with live storytelling.
According to KCRW’s official announcement, the program will feature five participants, with culinary anthropologist Vanessa Anderson serving as host and Good Food’s Evan Kleiman introducing the evening.
The setting is what makes this gathering particularly interesting. Rather than booking a traditional theater or auditorium, organizers are bringing the readings into the aisles of a neighborhood grocery store.
A Grocery Store Becomes a Storytelling Venue
Grocery stores usually have a predictable routine. Customers arrive with shopping lists, choose their groceries, and head toward the checkout counter. Sunday’s gathering introduces an entirely different reason to visit.
Fresco Community Market, located at 5914 Monterey Road, will serve as the setting for the second installment of the Stories In-Store series.
Organizers have encouraged guests to arrive early, explore the aisles, and pick up a snack before the readings begin.
The official ticketing page provides a more detailed schedule. Doors are expected to open at 7:30 p.m., with the first half-hour reserved for grocery shopping and arrival. The readings are scheduled to run from 8 p.m. until 9 p.m.
The event is centered on storytelling rather than cooking. No recipe demonstration, cooking competition, or organized food tasting is advertised.
Instead, the program invites participants to explore a familiar ingredient through writing and spoken words.
Why Eggs Are Taking Center Stage
Eggs appear in countless kitchens, but Sunday’s program approaches them as a subject for creative expression.
The organizers have selected eggs as the central theme for the evening’s stories, essays and poems.
That provides a broad subject for the participating writers, although the announcement does not specify what each person intends to present.
Some food events concentrate on preparing dishes or introducing ingredients. This gathering takes a different approach by treating food as something worth talking and writing about.
The format also allows a familiar grocery item to become the starting point for different kinds of storytelling.
What those individual stories will contain remains to be seen. The official announcement confirms the theme and participants but does not disclose the titles or subjects of their readings.
Five Participants Are Scheduled to Share Their Work
The evening will be hosted by Vanessa Anderson, the writer and culinary anthropologist behind Grocery Goblin.
Anderson’s project examines American food and consumer culture through grocery stores, making the market an especially fitting location for the event.
Evan Kleiman, the longtime host of KCRW’s Good Food program, is scheduled to introduce the gathering.
The announced lineup includes Bill Addison, Khushbu Shah, Tatiana Ettensberger, Meghan McCarron and Jamie Feldmar.
According to the organizer’s event lineup, Addison is the restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times. Shah is the author of Amrikan: 125 Recipes from the Indian American Diaspora and a former restaurant editor at Food & Wine.
Ettensberger is the co-owner, general manager, and wine director of Wilde’s in Los Feliz. McCarron is a journalist and speculative fiction writer, while Feldmar is a writer, editor and cookbook co-author.
Their backgrounds span restaurant criticism, culinary writing, hospitality and fiction.
The organizers have not announced which specific stories each participant will read. For attendees, that means the subject is known, but the individual interpretations remain part of the evening’s program.
Related: 7 Worst American Foods That Leave International Visitors Horrified
The Series Previously Explored Lunchtime
Sunday’s egg-themed event follows an earlier installment of Stories In-Store that focused on lunchtime. That gathering took place at Sabzee Market in Encino, another grocery-store setting.
KCRW revisited the earlier event in an October 5 Good Food bonus episode, featuring Anderson and discussions of the series.
The episode included stories from chef and political activist Angel Dimayuga and journalist Lauren Bethke.
Dimayuga discussed a family connection to the origins of McDonald’s Extra Value Meal, while Bethke shared an unusual restaurant experience involving nachos at a Los Angeles diner.
Those stories illustrate how the earlier installment connected everyday food experiences with personal accounts. For the second installment, the organizers have shifted the theme from lunchtime to a single ingredient.
The choice also keeps the series connected to grocery shopping, even as the subject and participating storytellers change.
KCRW describes the October gathering as the second installment, but the organization has not announced additional dates on the event page.
What Attendees Should Know Before Going
The event is scheduled to take place tonight, Sunday, October 18, at Fresco Community Market in Los Angeles’ Highland Park neighborhood.
The published schedule lists the following arrangements:
- Location: Fresco Community Market, 5914 Monterey Road, Los Angeles, CA 90042.
- Date: Sunday, October 18, 2026.
- Doors and shopping: 7:30 p.m. to 8 p.m.
- Storytelling program: 8 p.m. to 9 p.m.
- Host: Vanessa Anderson.
- Introduction: Evan Kleiman.
KCRW says seating is limited and encourages advance reservations. Members are also instructed to check the KCRW app for an exclusive promotional ticket code.
The organizers provide ticket reservations through Humanitix, although current ticket prices and remaining availability could not be independently confirmed.
The ticketing page also states that attendees may use the parking lot in front of Fresco Community Market.
Anyone considering attending should check the reservation page for the latest information before traveling.
