inspirational art near El Chico Produce
We’re big fans of El Chico Produce #4 in the Mission for inexpensive produce and Mexican and South American products. Located on 24th Street between Harrison and Alabama, the shop doesn’t look like much from the street. Surrounded by inexpensive restaurants, mainly featuring pork dishes; an unusual art shop and a Mexican bakery; it’s a place that you might miss if you don’t know what you’re looking for. As El Chico seems like so many other Mexican style groceries in the Mission, you might wonder what makes us come back again and again. It’s their wide array of offerings at competitive prices.
They have a large selection of fruits and vegetables. These rotate a little with the seasons. Like many of its competitors, El Chico’s produce is very uneven. Sometimes things are at the peak of freshness. Very often the produce is overripe, bordering on rotting, or so under-ripe that it’ll never hit its stride. Occasionally the fruit is so bruised that it looks unappealing. I’ve read somewhere that small “ethnic” markets like El Chico can offer a large variety at low prices because they accept produce that’s rejected by fancier supermarket chains like Safeway or Whole Foods. With all of the caveats aside, this is a great place for produce. Mostly we get vegetables that we cook. So if they’re a bit bruised or just ready for use, we simply prepare them right away. Often the very ripe things taste better than the beautiful-but-cardboard-flavored things from the chain stores. The fruit are perfect for groovy mango drinks. I use their tomatillos and fresh Serrano chiles for my tomatillo salsa.
El Chico Produce storefront
We go to El Chico for more than the produce. They have an extensive selection of Goya products. We’re huge fans of their stuffed green olives and capers. Goya offers a wide selection of canned beans though shop carefully. Sometimes the prices are higher than at Trader Joe’s. This store has lots of dried beans for sale—a must for vegetarian-leaning cooks and eaters. We particularly like their bulk pinto beans which are in this huge lined garbage can: functional but not elegant, an El Chico specialty. We’ve tried Peruvian beans from there, something that we haven’t noticed anywhere else. They look sort of yellowish brown, almost chartreuse really, when dried. They taste more or less like pinto beans when cooked.
yeah for Goya!
Finally I get all of my dried chiles at this shop: most recently pasilla and ancho chiles which I made into a smoky ancho salsa. But I buy chipotles there too. These go into my spicy chipotle salsa with the ultra ripe tomatoes I find in the produce section.
el chico interior
The place offers a lot of staples at least for our house: rice, garlic and onions, fresh herbs like Italian parsley and cilantro. Really El Chico #4 is worth checking out for inexpensive good foods with a South-of-the-Border flair.
gallons of coconut water
selection of dried chiles
some less-than-perfect fruit
carefully picking through Roma tomatoes