Things that caught my eye in Sam’s and Costco, Mexico
Food shopping in Mexico is changing so fast it’s hard to keep up. Every trip even to Sam’s and Costco offers lots of food for thought. Here are three for today.
1. The big Italian pasta company Barilla is taking on traditional Mexican pasta. Of course for ages the Wal-Mart chain has been selling Barilla Italian-style pastas.
But now they have ever-larger quantities of traditional Mexican-style pastas made by Barilla such as fideos, municiones, coditos, letras that used to be the stronghold of Mexican companies such as La Moderna.
Can the Mexican companies possibly withstand this corporate powerhouse? I wait to see.
2. Mexican meat packers are offering more and more pre-seasoned meats. Arrachera and fresh cecina have been in the grocery stores for years. But I think yesterday was the first time I had seen carne al pastor ready-packaged along with the other two, this time from RYC, a company in Puebla a hundred miles south west of Mexico City.
Ready-prepared carne al pastor neatly packaged will doubtless be snapped up by the all small street stand owners and comida corrida proprietors who stock up at these box stores. In fact there’s a great essay to be written on how changes in street food follow changes in corporate marketing strategy. I don’t have the knowledge to do it but someone should.
3. Sam’s in León (our local shopping town, booming shoe manufacturing center) improbably carried flour tortillas made in the suburbs of my little colonial town, Guanajuato. Now may be that’s just a gesture to the local. But it means that one family here is right on the ball and making out. After all, we are not in flour tortilla country. So this family got the machinery, started making them, sold them to Wal-Mart.
Wait for further updates. I’m going to try to get an interview on how this all happened.
Might it have something to do with all those guys who come home in pick-ups sporting TX & IL & NM & Az license plates? Maybe they bring back other things besides greenbacks.
Sure they do Kay. And then there are those who go with papers and they come back with lots too.
Good finds Rachel. Don’t remember if you covered this before – what is the difference between Italian and Mexican pastas?
Look forward to your interviews on how the one family succeeded in breaking into Walmart.
I’ll try to see them in the next couple of weeks. Meantime Mexican pasta (like some in Italy and Spain) is cooked pilau or risotto style–first fried, then simmered in an aromatic broth. Shapes are shorter, thinner as a consequence.
“Meantime Mexican pasta (like some in Italy and Spain) is cooked pilau or risotto style–first fried, then simmered in an aromatic broth.”
Same with some Algerian pasta dishes. As far as I know Algerian cuisine has a bigger range of pasta dishes than Moroccan or Tunisian. Morocco didn’t have the Italian influences that Algeria and Tunisia did.
Hmm, I don’t thnk that came up in our earlier discussions, Ji Young. Thanks.
Adam Balic asked me about Algerian pasta dishes after book of rai forum was shut down. I hadn’t thought about it in much detail until then. He was wondering about North African pasta dishes so I sent him some info and names/dishes from books I have.