My family and I drove to Virginia to visit my parents this past week and along the way, we spotted Wegmans in the midst of a massive new development between Washington, DC and Fredericksburg, VA. On the ride back, we stopped to visit and had dinner.

Wegmans is the store that was at the center of controversy at Town Meeting, where the town narrowly approved an article to grant a beer and wine license as part of a deal to bring the store to Westwood Station.

At the time of that debate, a few people familiar with Wegmans commented on how unique a store this is and how lucky we would be to get it. Personally, I was less concerned with that and with the whole thing was presented and handled. I don't want to reopen that debate here, but instead to report on what I found in Northern Virginia.

Wegmans IS unique. I snapped one photo before they stopped me, so all I have to show is the produce section:

The store has it all. It's a huge store with hundreds of employees and shoppers. You could fit a Whole Foods Market into one corner of the store. Probably 1/3 of the store was devoted to selling food for dining or take out...we dined in and looked down from a glass-walled balcony while our kids played in the childrens play area. Below us, food stations sold pizza by the slice, subs and sandwiches, sushi prepared to order at a bar, and multiple buffet lines of Asian specialty foods; everything from lemon grass chicken to tikki masala.

Navigating through the rest of the store, we encountered a bakery--with made to order pastries and even an oyster bar in the middle of the seafood section--where shoppers sat at the bar sipping glasses of wine.

At the entrance, we say the big loss leaders: cases of bottled water for $2.99 and 12-packs of Coke: 5/$10.

It was impressive. We did not have time to linger, but there is no question this is an awesome store that will draw visitors from all over the Boston area.

No less impressive was the development going on around the store to build Potomac Town Center. This area used to be trees--it was about the point in a drive away from DC where I could finally go on autopilot having escaped the traffic mess on my way to visit family when I lived in DC. However, on the Saturday morning we drove past Wegmans, we had plenty of time to notice the signs and mark the exit number as we were part of a stop and go nightmare that began just north of Potomac Mills and continued well past Quantico. I'm not saying we can make a comparison here in Westwood--the I-95 corridor is a special nightmare and has been so for years--it has simply sprawled south 30 or 40 more miles--but it was interesting to realize that Potomac Town Center is much smaller than Westwood Station plans to be.