Big Easy Fresh Market

Go for: Fresh pico de gallo, the hot bar, and awesome produce.

This store specializes in foods from Latin America, the Middle East and Asian countries. It also carries staples of a traditional American-style grocery, too. It’s like a one-stop shop for everything from sliced white bread, to yuca fries, to tandoori chicken, and more.

The hot bar alone is worth a stop with its rotating menu of dishes.

This places knows its strength lies in offering the items that can either be hard to locate or that simply do not exist in the big box chain stores, or at other local shops. I fell in love with this shop on my first visit. The people are friendly, the products are high quality, and the selection is broad.

Fresh produce is a priority, but so too is fresh baked breads — including baguettes, rolls, pan de bono, and pita. You’ll find more than a hundred styles of cheese from Mexico, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala in the back right corner of the store, then mosey over to the back left corner, and you’ll find a good selection of imported products from Lebanon, Jordan, and Turkey.

The house made pico de gallo, spicy guacamole, and two different kinds of salsa come by the pint, and are reasonably priced. The walk-in beer fridge is well stocked with a number of local brews, and the aisles in between showcase a wide array of unique items mostly from those countries south of our border. A visit here is like taking a trip abroad, without having to book a flight or deal with TSA.

There’s a self serve salad bar, a hummus bar, and that aforementioned hot bar which features fried chicken, fried fish, pollo asado, grilled and marinated flank steak, pork ribs, roasted lamb, empanadas, quesadillas, couscous, and more.

Big Easy Fresh Market is equal parts destination, and daily shopping spot, and it’s now definitely one of the places where I make my groceries. – scott mccrossen