I just stopped in here today after spotting it on the way home from Watch City Brewery, and boy am…read moreI glad I did. Before moving back to this area, I spent more than six years living in a neighborhood in Brooklyn populated largely with Mexican immigrants, which gave me ready access to their grocery stores, meat and fish markets, and restaurants. Now when I talk about Mexican grocery stores I'm not talking about some typical neighborhood convenience store with a little extra emphasis on the Goya products and some yuca, and plantains next to the bananas. I'm talking about Mexican businesses run by Mexican expatriates with other Mexican expatriates in mind, offering the creature comforts of their home and the necessary ingredients for a much revered home cooked meal. I miss those places. I miss having access to tortillas that were made in a factory three blocks away just a few days prior. I miss choosing between seven different types of regional chorizo. I miss the wide the range of queso fresco, imported hot sauces, and dried chilies that you just couldn't find in the other stores around the neighborhood. Walking into Azteca today was like walking back into one of those wonderful Mexican bodegas back in Bushwick.
The room is somewhat small, but they waste no space, as nearly every sq foot is carefully laid out with either shelves or coolers. There's peg-board along most of the walls allowing for racks and racks of bagged spices, cellophane pouches of dried chillies, as well as small toys, lady's beauty accessories, and hardware items. The real gold however is in the coolers and on the shelves. Fully ripened avocados, multiple different styles and brands of queso fresco, multiple different brands of chorizo from Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Mexico, and fresh tortillas fill some of the cooler space. And on the shelves; tons of hot sauces, salsas, sofrita, masa mix, mole, more spices, imported snack foods, the entire range of Goya jarred and canned vegetables (most of which don't make it into the big regional grocery chains), coconut milk, etc.
Along with the usual conveniences any corner store would offer (laundry soap, trash bags, boxed donuts, cat food) there's a literal plethora (that's right) of South and Central American kitchen culture and unique ingredients that just cannot be found anywhere else. Add in sugarcane versions of coke and pepsi (in glass bottles), a dozen kinds of Latin American sodas, fresh produce, and some incredibly friendly staff, and you cannot fail to find value in shopping at Azteca. Don't settle for the 'international aisle' at Stop & Shop, or Shaws - come to Azteca and get it from the people who know.
