When the first Safeway opened on Maui in 1983 near where the old Kahului Fairgrounds once stood, the big, brightly lit store made all the other grocery stores in town seem small and worn and unimaginative. There were brands on the shelves people had only seen on television ads, and now folks could fill their extra-big shopping carts with these things. Like fancy cheese. Before that, it was pretty much Kraft or Velveeta.

When the first Safeway opened on Kaua'i in 1989, people drove from the far ends of the island to take a gander at that big, shiny store. One of the longtime journalists on the island talked about taking his kids there to see the live lobsters in the tank in the seafood department. It was Kaua'i's Sea Life Park.

When Safeway opened in Kapolei in 1992, the 46,000-square-foot store was the biggest Safeway in the state. It featured in-store video rentals and accepted orders via fax.

Safeway Kapahulu, with its 64,000 square feet of shopping space, makes the other Safeways seem small and dingy. There are no birds living in the rafters of this galleria of food. The shopping carts roll like they're on Goodyear radials. The produce section stretches on for acres of green. Lightning flashes and thunder claps as "rain" rumbles through to spray the vegetables with a refreshing mist. A young man with hair like Sanjaya smiles from behind the nut bar. Yes, there is a nut bar. How fancy is that?!

The new Safeway, which opened Nov. 11, is being billed as a "lifestyle" store. What kind of lifestyle requires vats of mesquite barbecue pecans and cinnamon vanilla macadamia nuts under glass? A pretty nice lifestyle, obviously. If you've got the time and the money to pick out flavored nuts from a display case, the rest of the Planters-on-sale world can only envy.

But that's not who's shopping at Safeway Kapahulu. It's a diverse crowd rolling those smooth carts up and down the wide aisles. The customers couldn't be more diverse if they were cast as voters in a campaign ad.

Some came to gawk, some to shop, but even the shoppers had to gawk. There's a post office in the store. There's a Starbucks in the store. There's a bagel bar, doughnut bar, open-flame oven and a sign that says, "store tours." It's like a PX for civilians. It's like a cruise ship on land. It's the Bay Area in Kapahulu.

And once again, Safeway has managed to bring something to Hawai'i that hadn't been seen before: a store with a definite "wow" factor.

(And a nut bar.)

Lee Cataluna's column runs Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Reach her at 535-8172 or lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.