Since (finally, finally) giving up on ALBERTSON'S following yet another incidence of their…read moreslight-of-hand meat pricing that gouges customers, I discovered the FIESTA SUPERMARKET just a mile from my house. What an entirely different yet comfortingly familiar shopping experience it is!
The spanking-clean FIESTA MART is a toe-dip into another view of grocery shopping that is a rather Mexican state of mind. Once you park in the busy lot, grab a cart from the big supply outside the doors and enter the place, a whole world of new and interesting shopping choices is presented.
As you enter, you will pass taco vendors and meat grillers stationed just outside the doors. They work at enticing you with delicious-smelling and inexpensive choices ready to eat, from a single taco to whole roasted chickens and slabs of tender ribs for take-home.
Inside the store (on the right) is a clean but rather spare looking sit-down restaurant serving fresh fare from a steam-table set-up at astonishingly low prices. The servings are GENEROUS!
Past the restaurant, the bakery department presents its finest work. Beautifully decorated cakes, cookies, and a whole wall of plexiglas doors, behind which is a VAST self-serve selection of Mexican pastries and regular donuts. Finally, at the end of the display, are the bread selections, including bolilos (individual bread loaves) in both "regular" and "cracked wheat," five for a dollar. All of this is made in-store, right in front of your eyes, including the freshest and most delicious tortillas you've ever enjoyed.
As you continue a circle around the store's outer perimeter (where the delicate and fresh are to be found), you'll enter the fruit and vegetable section. Piled high are displays of everything you know and many things you've never seen before. Roma tomatoes were 39-cents a pound recently. Red Texas grapefruit, three for a dollar. Oranges and tangerines were so laughably cheap you could have supplied every child's soccer team in the city with them for pocket change. If you're into eating more greens, they offer generous bundles of mustard, collard and turnip. Kale and spinach and lettuce varieties are also there. Bananas of at least three varieties, onions of 5 or 6 kinds, potatoes out the ying-yang, and fresh herbs are stacked high. So are the cactus, fresh chickpeas, lemongrass and other reasonably obscure choices, making shopping an adventure you simply can't get at Kroger!
On to the fresh seafood section, where fish and shrimp and crabs (etc.) are on crushed ice, always displaying their country of origin. The prices are reasonable, they handle things carefully and the counter is directly across from the rather complete ASIAN foods section!
Once past the seafood, you find what amounts to a Mexican style DELI, with lunch-meats and sliced cheeses by the pound. Past that is the whole meat department, including a glassed-in display of already-marinated meats, including chicken and beef for fajitas!.
I should mention that Mexicans slice beef quite differently than American-style markets. And you will find things not found elsewhere so easily, like tongue, hearts, and other organs. But be brave because all the meat prices are surprisingly low and the quality is high. (I can always find whole chickens for under a buck a pound and a pork chop is a pork chop.) And where else can you find frozen DUCK right there by the frozen giant smoked turkey legs?!
The dairy department is a wonder, with a huge selection of milks and processed cheeses, tubs of yogurt, and Philly products. (I think what I'm trying to say is that it's no different than most other dairy departments in "regular" supermarkets. It's not a trip to a foreign land.) Until just recently, I was getting a half-gallon of milk for only 99-cents. The price has gone up, but I can still get a gallon for $2.39.
They have beer and wine, but the wine selection is tiny and seems staggeringly out of date, featuring the cheapest of the cheap stuff. Same goes for the coffee selections, which offers too many tubs of floor-sweepings disguised as coffee (Folger's, Maxwell House, etc.) and bricks of ground foreign brands. No whole bean coffee is available; no "quality brands" are to be found.
Mexican markets are not hot-beds of nutritional trends. I bewailed the serious lack of ANY whole-wheat choices and the store responded by stocking a few, both in bagged, sliced bread and pasta. But too often it's not legally defined as "100% whole wheat," but some "blend" of processed flours, including a LITTLE BIT of whole wheat... When it comes to bread, the only choices involve those long squared "Pullman" loaves that we associate with Mrs. Baird's (now owned by the Mexican brand called Bimbo). SIGH!
The rest of the store is a wonderland of canned and processed goods, paper goods, etc., found in most markets and some not so much.
TRY THIS PLACE, YOU WILL COME TO LOVE IT! And you don't have to speak Spanish, either! They speak English.