The other day, in composing what I hoped would be a deliciously entertaining email, I used "sumptuary" to modify "grocery". Alas, after I'd actually mailed the damn thing I realized that I had misused the word because the meaning I really wanted was "catering to the carriage trade." I suppose I could have said "upscale", but is there another adjective with this meaning? And don't say "yuppie."
"Sumptuous" is the obvious answer here, but what I really wanted was an adjective that described the clientele as much as the place itself. A grocery that has fifty buck bottles of balsamic vinegar, etc. in order to attract a crowd of affluent foodies.
Maybe a phrase would work as well as a single word. Since the customers are driving up in 50K Mercedes combine a word with that.Mercedes borne matrons, perhaps.
If the place serves comestibles such as olive oil, spices, anti-pasta etc., it might be dubbed a delicatessen. When I was a young boy we called the 'corner shop' a deli (delicatessen), but in other languages the word is only used to denote the expensive shop/market. Strange. As for the people who visit one ... hmmm .. a customer, a purchaser, a frequenter, a food connoisseur?
And meanwhile, "sumptuary" is a perfectly good word, esp. when used as "sumptuary laws", which doesn't mean laws written with the juice of marrons glacés, but regulations intended to keep the proles from getting above their station.
I vote for "up-scale," because of the suggestion of arrivistes. Real foodies know where the ethnic markets are and get a better selection and more knowledgeable help.
(The French have many words to mean too rich: nouveau riche, arriviste, parvenu come to mind. Must be like the Eskimos and their extensive vocabulary for snow.....)
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