For years the Valley has prided itself on its bicultural food traditions: barbacoa and barbecue, pecan pie and flan. Ethnic foods remain the most durable link to our heritage and our families. Yet the Valley is becoming visibly multi-cultural as seen in the proliferation of ethnic markets catering to immigrants and visitors from Asia, India, Africa, the Middle East and South America. On McAllen’s 10th Street alone, you will find Japanese, African, Middle Eastern, Korean and Filipino markets. The international stores attract adventurous eaters and chefs as well as seasoned travelers.
Ruben’s World Market began as a mom-and-pop neighborhood grocery selling buckets of lard and 50-pound bags of flour more than 40 years ago, according to Ruben Cavazos Jr., who as general manager runs the bustling store with his father and brother Hugo. Today, chefs from upscale and cutting edge restaurants are spotted at Ruben’s picking up quail eggs, ginger beer, authentic saffron, Iberico ham from acorn-fattened pigs, ricotta salata, bone marrow and the exotic durian fruit. Foodies and chefs consider Ruben’s a reliable source for suckling pigs, salt cod, cuttlefish ink, fresh vanilla beans, organic cardamom and Himalayan sea salt grilling stones.
Housed in a former Baptist church, the market years ago converted the baptismal pool into the meat market area and expanded the building in all directions to handle increasing demand for its international products. Cavazos recalled that when many independent Valley grocers began closing around 1995, he decided to take on the big stores, not on pricing but on specialty items. Ruben’s was the first store in the nation to carry Goya products, and today it carries the entire product line of the Puerto Rican manufacturer, orange shells to sardines. After the USDA authorized Mexican products, those items lined the 20th Street store’s shelves.
“Things just started to fall together,” said Cavazos. “I contacted the consulates to find how many Argentinians and Columbians were in the U.S.” He traveled to source South American products but decided it was too complicated to import food directly. Cavazos now has friends in Miami delivering South American foods to McAllen, and, in return, he ships in-demand Mexican foods to them in “a wonderful symbiosis between Miami and the Valley.”
“We carry things that big stores are not carrying,” said Cavazos. His Valley customers — Peruvian doctors, Argentine textile executives, Cuban business owners — taught him what to stock. “What do I know about Cuban cuisine? Or alfajores (a chewy South American stuffed-cookie dipped in merengue or chocolate) which have about 5,000 calories each?”
Cavazos occasionally has to submit imported foodstuffs for nutritional testing in order to secure suitable MDR data for an American label.
But it’s not only chefs who haunt Ruben’s, checking out hand-molded Saint Albray cheese with its hint of truffles, Jamaican jerk sauces and 13 kinds of Trinidad curry. “Bartenders shop here because of the syrups we have from England, France and Slovenia,” Cavazos said. Salt bartender Milton Saravia added his opinion, “The pricing on the wine is unrivaled.”
Closer to home
Until last July, Valley residents had travelled to San Antonio to shop for Korean foods at the market owned by Christy Kim’s family. She is now general manager of the well-stocked Seoul Asian which opened last summer on South 10th Street. “There is a market for this,” said Kim, surrounded by sliced pork bellies, Korean radishes, enoki mushrooms, Korean ginseng tea, sweet pickled vegetables and, of course, kimchee.
It’s not only people of Korean heritage who stop to shop at Seoul for udon noodles and Japanese miso. “A lot of locals are getting to know us,” Kim said, including customers who enjoy a variety of Asian foods, which they have sampled at restaurants or while traveling. Along with fresh, frozen and packaged Chinese, Filipino, Japanese and Korean foods like pot stickers and seaweed, the store carries many varieties of rice as well as rice cookers and dishes.
If Seoul Asian is McAllen’s newest ethnic market, Sahadi’s is among the city’s oldest. Gene Fjerftab ,who has owned Sahadi’s for two years, recently completed the renovation of the Middle Eastern store and restaurant. Buckets of olives, jars of caviar and tins of anchovies are stocked for families with ties to Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan and the Near East. Fjerftab, whose background is in distribution, expects the market to be the stronger element of Sahadi’s. The store also sells wholesale.
The store is popular with local residents, particularly Mexican nationals. “Some of them have an international background. They have quite an experienced palate,” he said.
Martin Oteka, along with other immigrants from Africa, had driven back and forth to Houston to stock up on foods from their home countries. In 2006, Oteka decided to meet an obvious need and opened JC Africa & Caribbean Food Store with an inventory of palm oils from Ghana and Cameroon, cassava and cocoyam flours, and hot peppers. Probably no other store in south Texas carries two types of kola nuts. The store’s spices and staples of Caribbean cuisines, like Jamaican and Trinidad, appeal to many local foodies. Oteka said some of his customers come from Mexico to buy the fragrant palm oil.
Spices & Grains International Food Market is the newest Indian food store in the Valley, opening last September. Run by the husband and wife team of Parag (who grew up in Brownsville) and Karishma Rupani, the store is a sensory destination with its fragrant spices and colorful packages of lentils, snacks and prepared food from India. But the Rupanis invite customers to travel beyond Indian cuisine with foods popular in Turkey, Egypt, Asia and the Pacific. A large glass-fronted freezer is packed with varieties of naan bread, samosas and vegetarian meals.
“We have organic chia seeds, the cheapest in Brownsville,” Karishma said. The market also carries halal meat.
If you are seeking preserved duck eggs or wonton wrappers, Harlingen’s Asia Mart stocks them. A go-to place for Vietnamese, Filipino, Chinese and Pacific island foods since 1997, the store has a large selection of fishes, including milkfish and mackerel.
See rubensgrocery.com, jcafricacaribbean.com, sahadisrestaurant.com, Spices & Grains at 544-1133 (2045 E. Price),Seoul Asian at 928-1163 (1006 S. 10th), and Asia Mart at 440-9288 (1801 S. 77 Sunshine Strip).
June 2014 cover story by Eileen Mattei