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With the opening of stores in the north of England, Tony Naylor has been compelled to reassess his distaste for Waitrose. Is it the standard by which all supermarkets should be judged?

Being yer typical chippy northerner, I have an almost tribal aversion to Waitrose. This "fancy supermarket chain where the godless middle-classes go to worship" (thank you, Jay Rayner) has always seemed like the retail embodiment of the home counties: smug, privileged, overrated.

From a distance, it is easy to dismiss it as a huge marketing con; a place in which rich fools gladly part with their money in return for the illusion of superior quality. It's just a supermarket. And for years, given there were no Waitrose stores up north, this was an easy prejudice to maintain.

In recent months, however, I have been forced to think again. Not just because they have opened stores in Sheffield, Buxton, Leeds and Newcastle (with further expansion, Including the purchase EAT chain Planned), and not just because my position is fundamentally comic (I 'm writing a blog about Waitrose, for the Guardian: how the middle class, am I?), But because the company' s sudden bucking the recession posted 11% sales growth last year, and the attendant publicity around the John Lewis Partnership model, has made me see the company in a whole new light.

Frankly, I had no idea how well Waitrose treats its staff, or 'partners'. This recent Guardian feature is like a vision of an alternative reality in which British industrial relations have been moulded by Scandinavian-style consensus rather than Thatcherism. And I like it. For anyone who calls themselves a socialist or liberal, this surely makes shopping at this model, worker-owned business, a duty. That the chain also leads the way on all sorts of issues, from animal welfare to transparent sourcing, is a further bonus.

But questions remain. Is Waitrose prohibitively expensive? If it costs more, is it worth it? Is it, genuinely, the foodist's supermarket?

To try to find out, I was shopping there regularly in recent weeks, the first time. I specifically checked the prices the following 22 key points (you can see a list of stores and full results here in PDF format ) At Altrincham industries Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury:

Waitrose: £ 34,91
Tesco: £32.24
Sainsbury: £31.72

That, over a £30ish shop, Waitrose is only £3.19 dearer than Sainsbury (which narrowly beat Tesco largely thanks to a very cheap jar of pesto) may or may not surprise you, depending on how closely you scrutinise your till receipts. Waitrose's recessionary 'essential' rangeapparently, all prices are competitive, and some essential items (bread, milk, sugar, etc.) seems to be at a fixed price, where you shop. Tesco, apparently, to set prices and other local supermarkets to compare them. Waitrose proudly points out how some of its key products price-checking tesco.com .

Still, £3 (or £15 on a £150 monthly shop) is a lot of money if you're on a low income, and once you move outside of basic items at Waitrose you can spend a lot of money very quickly. Even by accident. Such is the emphasis on organic products - something which, personally, I have little interest in - that it is very easy to drop a small, ridge cucumber from Somerset (£1.29) into your basket, rather than the ordinary 78p one. Which brings us to the second point: is Waitrose worth the money?

Broadly, yes. At a basic level, it's difficult to tell one supermarket's own-brand bran flakes from the next. Just above that, however, at the convenience-food level of sandwiches, soups, ready meals and such, there is a clear, qualitative difference. In any taste test, to give but two examples, Waitrose's Keralan chicken soup (£2.49; mustard seeds, curry leaves and big chunks of chicken clearly visible), or its fish pie (750g, 33% fish, and expensive at £6.99 but satisfying in a way ready meals rarely are), would trounce comparable products from rival supermarkets.

As does its choice of speciality food items. The butcher's counter actually carries meat with a good deep purple tinge; the cheese counter would trump many delis'. Where else would you find Halen Môn sea salt, Pommery moutarde de meaux, fresh garlic or sugo ai carciofi (artichoke sauce), in a supermarket? Moreover, some of these items make more sense than the price tag might first suggest. Waitrose's Leckford Estate free-range chicken, for instance, is roughly double the price (1.78kg, £9.46) of its standard chicken, but spin that bird out through three meals and - for that rarest of things, a chicken that actually tastes of chicken - it begins to look like far better value.

But, then, you know all that, don't you? The key question is should we all be shopping at Waitrose? Obviously, for those on low incomes, even doing a basic weekly shop there will be too expensive. For the rest of us, however, certainly doing a proportion of our shopping at Waitrose is an affordable option and one that, particularly if you strive to shop ethically, makes logical sense. What is the point in buying fairtrade tea if you buy it in a supermarket which treats its own staff like crap?

As for more expensive, exotic items - foodie treats, essentially - I would use Waitrose in combination with, or in the absence of, a local deli. There are good reasons to support high street diversity and independent shops, but there is also a lot to be said, practically and ideologically, for supporting the supermarket which on many issues (carbon footprint, British sourcing, Ethical food etc.) is in the forefront .

Flawed as it no doubt is, Waitrose looks like our best chance of establishing a sustainable, responsible national supermarket chain; the expansion of which should drive down its prices and make it more accessible to everyone. Is it our duty, as switched-on foodies, to shop there? Or are you unconvinced? Does shopping there make you feel like a class traitor?