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Mexican on Jefferson: Tienda Hispana and Supermercado Monterrey
Posted on Monday, June 16 @ 20:27:37 PDT
Topic: Mexican
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A brief item highlighting a pair of shopping options: Tienda Hispana and Supermercado Monterrey.
Tienda Hispana, 303 E. Jefferson Blvd.
As one might surmise by the "pupuseria" identification, Tienda Hispana is primarily a Salvadoran shop. Though the space is small, the focus on Salvadoran goods makes it a fun browse. Some highlights: Salvadoran cocoa mix (dry, with cinnamon and sugar), Salvadoran horchata mixes, cornhusk-wrapped piloncillo, jarred pacaya, loroco, and jocote (the latter of which I don't recall having seen elsewhere in Dallas), and Kolashanpan (i.e., a mamey-flavored soda that is to El Salvador what Guaranį is to Brazil). In addition to some sundries, the shop carries Salvadoran CDs and videos.
Though the menu does include Mexican items in addition to the Salvadoran, I decided to play to what I felt would be their strength in my first visit. The "Super Especial" platter would offer a quick glimpse at some basic Salvadoran antojitos.
The platter arrived with a tamal de pollo, some fried yuca, a pupusa de loroco, and curtido. (The fried plantain was omitted without explanation.) Though a fair amount of food for $6.50, nothing really impressed. The yuca was hard and unyielding, the pupusa
verging on leaden. The best item was the tamale. Though the masa was wet and dense, the filling of chicken and potato was enjoyable enough.
Though I've been back to Tienda Hispana several times since that first meal, I still haven't tried any of the Mexican menu items. Three reasons for that.
First, I had to wait over an hour and a half from the time I ordered to get the plate described above. Every time I've been there, there's been one woman working. She's usually sitting at the register in the front of the store. If you order food, she has to go to the back to cook it, coming back to the front to help any customers that walk in.
Second, I'm the only person I've ever seen eating at Tienda Hispana. Whenever I've seen other customers, they're there for the shelved goods, not for the "restaurant" part of the business. My visits have been during lunch and dinner hours when most restaurants on Jefferson do a fair amount of business. Lack of business (at a time and in a location where business should be expected) is cause for caution.
Third, as I said, the Salvadoran items (two of which were made to order) weren't very good. If a Salvadoran joint can't do a great pupusa, it's hard to imagine their Mexican dishes are going to be any better.
In fairness, though, Tienda Hispana is chiefly a tienda. And the small, but interesting, collection of Salvadoran goods is worth checking out, if you're in the area.
Supermercado Monterrey, 300 E. Jefferson Blvd.
Supermercado Monterrey, a medium-sized market, is directly across the street from Tienda Hispana. Part of a chain with several locations in the Dallas Fort Worth area, the store includes a basic tortilleria and carniceria.
The produce section was, for the most part, pretty standard stuff. No chiles, fruits, or veg that you wouldn't find at just about any Mexican market. The loofah gourds hanging above the vegetables were a little unusual, I suppose. Then there was the nopalito lady. Sitting at a table near the front of the store, an old woman with a big knife and sure and able hands made short work of a large box of nopales, cleaning them, removing the spines, and cutting them up into nopalitos. (I was tempted to take some video of her in action, but that felt a little tacky.) Even when she's not there, the nopalitos can be found bagged and on ice towards the front of the produce section (as pictured at the top of this entry). Very convenient.
In the southeast corner of the store, the tortilla machine spits out corn and flour tortillas. If you have to settle for bagged tortillas, it's nice to be able to get them so fresh that there's still condensation on the inner surface of the plastic.
The carniceria lines the back of the store, with the prepared meats section near the tortilla machine. Chicharrones, carnitas, pig ears and feet, costillas, tripitas, et al. Though not a meat, they also have freshly fried quesadillas in the case sometimes. With no bar or tables, this is strictly carryout. But you can buy a bag of tortillas and a pound or more of meat, then retire to the hood of your car to gorge, which is what I did.
The quesadilla was, in fact, a deep-fried cheese and chile taco. Though warm enough for the queso blanco to remain soft, the shell suffered from sitting under the heat lamps, compromising the crispness with a little too much grease. Pretty good, nonetheless, especially for the $.89 price tag.
Good carnitas. No detectable citrus flavor (not that it would be a bad thing)--just clean, juicy pork under a crisp exterior. Tender enough to pull apart with a plastic fork.
Standard chicharrones. Crisp, salty, delicious. An old woman ahead of me in line, probably intending to use the chicharrones for a cooked dish, was aggressively directing the girl with the tongs to pick up specific curlicues, going for the ones with the most meat attached. She took so long, I was about to leave. Then I saw a young man with a Sacred Heart tattoo on his forearm begin gingerly transfering freshly fried mollejas into the case.
Mollejas = sweetbreads. Judging by the easy jiggle of each piece as it settled into the tray, they clearly weren't overcooked to "feels like chicken" firmness.
The sweetbreads were delicious. The texture was spot on--lush, smooth, with a marrow-like creaminess. It felt wrong to clutter them with anything extraneous, so I skipped the tortillas and salsa and just ate them straight. If I have any quibble, it's that the flavor of the frying oil was too strong. (Presumably they're using the same lard for the mollejas as they are the chicharrones, carnitas, et al.) It wasn't so bothersome that I couldn't overlook it, though.
I envision readers having one of three reactions to the photo above:
Reaction #1: "That looks amazing! I can't wait to go there!"
Reaction #2: "Thymus? Ewww!"
Reaction #3: "I love sweetbreads, but I've only ever had them in meals that cost more than $50. If Supermercado Monterrey can sell sweetbreads for six bucks a pound, there's something sketchy about the whole thing."
For those with Reaction #3, I would direct your attention to those who have Reaction #2. That's why you usually only find sweetbreads in a fine dining setting. It's a cultural obstacle, not economic. If more people had Reaction #1 than Reaction #2, you'd find sweetbreads at the Cheesecake Factory (with curly fries and buttermilk Ranch). Until that happens, there are certain foods that will be found at the very high end and the very low end, but nowhere in between (e.g., pork belly, beef/pork cheeks, cockscombs, sweetbreads, heart, trotters, kidneys, brain, et al.).
And you know what? The connection between the chef, the ingredient, and the culinary tradition is often closer and more organic at the low end than at the high end. Supermercado Monterrey is not serving mollejas because offal is a "hot trend" right now. Not because it's something their cook happened to pick up at the CIA. Not because it's a dish their status-conscious customers associate with French haute cuisine. No, sweetbreads are simply traditional for many Mexicans, while most Americans have never tasted them and may not even know what they are. Trust the tradition.
If you go for the sweetbreads, try to visit at a peak time to increase the odds of getting some that haven't been sitting around too long.
$14 bought me a bag of flour tortillas (since that's what was coming off the conveyor belt at the moment), a bottle of grapefruit Jarritos, one quesadilla, and a half pound each of carnitas, chicharrones, mollejas, and guacamole. Had I eaten it all in one sitting, my executor would be completing this report.
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