local markets

welcome to Mi Pueblo Food Center

And I am sure glad that we did!

This place is enormous. It really is a “food center” and not just a store. Aside from the aisles and aisles of groceries, they’ve a huge working kitchen which serves a thriving open restaurant; a bakery that makes a wide range of cakes, cookies, tropical fruit-filled confections as well as tortillas that you can sample warm from the grill. I’ve seen staff behind small portable counters shucking oysters and trimming thorns off nopales (edible cactus). Once we went and they had tequila vendors hawking their wares.

bustling Mi Pueblo restaurant

rows and rows of Mi Pueblo dry goods

Mi Pueblo seafood section

I really like the bright colors and the cheery mood I always feel while perusing the produce and guava-filled sweets. Most times I’ll get some pastry or other to munch on between samples while I fill my shopping cart. On our last visit, part of the parking lot had been blocked off for a children’s birthday party. Inside festive brassy Mexican music filled the air with its happy sound.

beautiful serrano chiles

brown sugar cones

mountains of red cactus fruit are not something that I see everywhere

white and yellow onions

papaya

Many of the items for sale, as you might expect, focus on Mexican and Central American cuisine, which I adore. Mi Pueblo has an especially exciting selection of mild white cheeses, which taste great with jam on crusty bread at breakfast. I’m partial to the Los Altos Queso Fresco. You can easily get all the staples here: rice, beans, various fresh and dried chiles, tomatillos, tomatoes, tortillas and crispy corn chips, homemade salsas, cheeses, you name it.

child's party in front of Mi Pueblo

fresh garbanzo beans

Mi Pueblo roma tomatoes

pineapple

chilled yogurt drinks

poblanos and avocados at Mi Pueblo

Turns out that this is just one of 19 stores in the Bay Area. Their newest just opened in Newark, CA and they’re developing one now in Gilroy. So if you haven’t seen Mi Pueblo already, you will, somewhere soon. When you do, go there, and go often.

some Mi Pueblo house-made baked goods

tostadas

candles

varous cheeses: see the Los Altos Queso Fresco in the middle?

various beans

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beautiful Peace Pagoda at the Japan Center

It is a wonderful experience to visit the beautiful Japan Center in San Francisco. There you can have a tasty meal at any of the numerous delightful Japanese restaurants, browse the shops for beautiful furniture imports, teapots, Japanese paintings, bonsai plants or even expensive plastic sushi models. If you’re feeling more reflective, you can sit in Peace Plaza and gaze tranquilly at the dramatic Peace Pagoda. You can even catch the latest movie at the Kabuki Theatre. But if you’re with us, then we’re probably headed for Nijiya Market.

Nijiya is a Japanese supermarket chain that started out in San Diego. You can find them in Northern and Southern California as well as two locations in Hawaii. They have everything that you could want for making excellent Japanese or Japanese-inspired creations in your own home. We love this place.

Usually we get staples like rice, dried wakame and nori paper, various kinds of shoyu (soy sauce), miso paste, ultra fresh sushi-grade fish, sake, tofu, etc. I really like Japanese crackers. Have you seen them? They’re the ones that look like colorful little puffs that have a sweet, savory and seafood taste. Sometimes the better ones come with tiny dried fish mixed in. Another fun thing to snack on while passing the afternoon at the Japan Center is mochi, these mildly sweet rice cakes which are often filled with things like sweet red beans. I am especially drawn to the mochi that are covered in sesame seeds. They’ve a wonderful texture and taste.

Nijiya Market in San Francisco

colorful holiday treats

a wide selection of miso paste

some premade lunches ready to eat

sushi grade fish

ultra fresh veggies at Nijiya Market

Nijiya Market is always crowded. Plan to go when you don’t feel that rushed. They offer so much that you’ll want to take your time and really explore.

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I always want to write “San Jose” with the accent mark, like this: “San José.” I don’t think that people do that here in California. Hmm.

come by L and F Fish Market in San Jose for great salt cod

Well accent or not, we know the way to San Jose and the excellent though easily overlooked, L and F Fish Market. This hole-in-the-wall Portuguese fish market right off CA-101 across from a beautiful Portuguese Catholic church is worth a visit if you love salt cod.

Hegui read the Mark Kurlansky book, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World. That author credits that humble fish with allowing Europeans to finally settle the New World, as it was one of the few foodstuffs that could survive the long passage across the Atlantic. Certainly the Portuguese and Spanish still eat this fish. In Brazil salt cod has a long cultural history connected to Europe. That’s why we eat it at my house. Hegui, a Brazilian, knows how to prepare it into wonderful and flavorful creations. I especially enjoy his bacalhoada and arroz de bacalhau com broccolis.

underwhelming store front of L and F Fish Market

Norwegian salt cod is the best at L and F

selection of salt cod

Since Christmas is right around the corner, we made the forty-five minute schlep to San Jose to get some cod at L and F.

The shop is run by a father-and-son team. It’s not much to look at outside or in, and since you have to make a complex turn off the exit from 101 South, it is east to miss. Inside they sell a number of dry goods like Portuguese olive oil, canned sardines, olives and, of course, wine, Port and Madeira. But here it is all about the fish.

fresh whole albacore for sale

some Portuguese wines for sale

some Portuguese dry goods at L and F

they use a jigsaw to cut the salt cod

We haven’t tried their fresh fish though we saw dramatic whole albacore tuna and several other whole fresh fish. But when we’re here, we’re looking for the salt cod. The Norwegian is thought to be best but the Canadian is fine, too. We got both. The younger, cuter owner cuts the fish to size for you with a massive jigsaw behind the counter. He doesn’t wear gloves, which scares me in two ways: obviously, he could hurt himself, but also the salted fish can burn and the smell easily permeates the skin. I hope that he’s got good health insurance, but more importantly, that he’s already coupled up.

Portuguese Catholic church across from L and F Fish

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welcome to the St. Lawrence Market

Our friends in Toronto, knowing our interest in food, strongly encouraged us to check out the St. Lawrence Market while we were in town. Located on Front and Jarvis Streets, the Market is a large and elegant building that houses over 120 specialty food and food-related shops. Across Front in another building that’s part of the St. Lawrence Market complex, you can find a Saturday farmers market and, on Sundays, a large antiques fair.

We stayed only a couple blocks from the St. Lawrence on our Canadian excursion so we went almost every day. Open Tuesday through Saturday, they have marvelous bakeries, cheese shops, fruit and vegetable vendors, an exciting mustard shop (Did you know that Canada is the world’s largest mustard producer?), local wine merchants, housewares stores, and shops for meat, seafood and even Canadian maple syrup.

I became addicted to this one bakery that makes a “Swiss muesli and raisin” bagel. It wasn’t much like New York style bagels, but the crunchy nutty muesli coating the raisin filled bread went down so easily with my Starbucks coffee each morning. I was devastated that the place was closed on our last day in Toronto, a Sunday, as I couldn’t enjoy it one more time.

admiring bread at the St. Lawrence Market

are you even in Canada if you don't come across a display of maple syrup at a farmers market?

blueberries at St. Lawrence farmers market

colorful squash at St. Lawrence farmers market

We both thought that the farmers market was pretty interesting, too. The local produce seemed different from what you find in San Francisco at Alemany or the UN Plaza. We hardly saw any Asian vegetables, for example, and there were many fewer varieties of tomato. But there were wonderful berries, bell peppers, apples and even crab apples for sale. I didn’t realize that you could eat the crab apple. I always thought that they gave upset stomach, hence their irritable name. The radishes and heads of cauliflower were simply enormous at the St. Lawrence farmers market. Could that be from the extra long sunny days that Canada enjoys in the summertime?

If you’re visiting Toronto, then you simply must go to the St. Lawrence Market.

butter tarts at the St. Lawrence farmers market

crab apples at St. Lawrence farmers market

eggplant at St. Lawrence farmers market

fresh pasta for sale at St. Lawrence Market

inside the St. Lawrence Market

Ontario peaches

some string beans for sale at the St. Lawrence farmers market

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