Inspiration from El Burrito Mercado

I like food. I don’t necessarily “like” cooking. I’m perfectly capable of cooking, but most of the time, I like my food pre-prepared. However, because I do cook from time to time, I need to know my way around a grocery store. The best local option is Cub Foods, a big store with just about any standard food option. It gets the job done.

I bring this up because my excursion this week was to El Burrito Mercado, a Mexican supermarket in St. Paul. I’ve never really been to a cultural supermarket before. My frozen food diet rarely calls for any specialty ingredients that can’t be found at Cub Foods. But this store has an integrated restaurant, so how could I say no?

I was pleasantly surprised by all the recognizable selections available. Near the door is a frozen food section with namebrand ice cream and frozen pizzas. The selection is smaller than at a big grocery store, but it’s not as big of a store, so that’s fine. The fresh fruits and vegetables were more than sufficient to prepare various meals, the meats section was staffed by jovial meatsmiths, and the bakery section had both traditional treats as well as massive cookies.

At the restaurant, I made a bit of an ass of myself not understanding the options available to me for a burrito, but in the end, the employees made themselves understood. It’d good, every once in a while, to be on the other end of not being understood, so you gain perspective when you’re not being understood. The burrito was more expensive than Chipotle, but I could tell that the ingredients were prepared in my favorite style: use only the ingredients that you need, and throw it into a burrito.

They also had a selection of Mexican soda, which is still made with real sugar. As for the burrito, it had only the flavors that it needed. Chipotle is my closest comparison; Chipotle has a lot of flavors going on at once, sometimes too many. It was nice to have a burrito that felt like it was compiled from homemade ingredients around a kitchen table.

Honestly, I was apprehensive about just how “cultural” this market would be. There were some aspects that I didn’t understand and clearly weren’t intended for me, but then again, there are some aspects of Cub Foods that aren’t intended for me. If you live near Cesar Chavez St and State St, I recommend you try their food, and if you need a grocery store, you could do worse.