On Thursdays in Guerrero,
a southern state on Mexico’s Pacific coast, the Pozolerias are packed. “It’s
been the traditional day since I can remember,” says Ernesto, who grew up in Guerrero.
At a Pozoleria, “You can
order chicken mole or taquitos,” Ernesto says. But on Thursdays, “You’re not
going to look at the menu. You’re going to sit down with your friends and order
pozole.”
Pozole is a Mexican stew
of pork and hominy seasoned with chiles, oregano, epazote and topped with
shredded lettuce, sliced radishes, cheese, avocado, tostadas or chicharrones.
Leave as is, or swap chicken in for pork, and you have pozole blanco; add
tomatillos, pumpkin seeds and cilantro for pozole verde; cook with dried ancho
or guajillo chiles to make pozole rojo.
At his usual lunch spot –
behind the counter at Lupita’s Grocery
on the Italian Market – Ernesto dipped his spoon into a warm bowl of pozole blanco
topped with sliced jalapeno, crispy chicharron, queso fresco, and chunks of
avocado.
“A friend of mine cooked
this and brought it yesterday,” he says. (It was Monday – since moving to the
states in 1991, he enjoys pozole any day of the week.)
Ernesto doesn’t cook much.
For lunch, he often orders tacos from Blue Corn down the
street, or heads to the truck on the corner of 10th St. and
Washington Ave. “Sometimes I cook.
Like every other week,” he says. But for the most part, the ingredients at his
grocery store are for customers.
Ernesto opened Lupita’s
after working in Philly restaurants for more than a decade. His brother helped
him get his first job after moving to the States, washing dishes at a
now-closed mall in University City. “I was washing dishes, taking in
deliveries,” he said. “I didn’t speak English so what was I going to do? It was
not easy.”
He then found a job at the
Midtown II Diner where he met Freddy, a Puerto Rican cook who helped him learn
English.
“I asked him when he
wasn’t busy to write down the words I heard in the kitchen in English,” Ernesto
said. “At night, when I got home, I’d take out all the little pieces of paper
and look through the [Spanish-English] dictionary.”
A few years later, he was
out of the kitchen and looking to start a business of his own. He bought the 9th
Street storefront from an Italian couple. “The walls were falling apart,” he
remembers. He did major renovations and stocked the shelves with Mexican pantry
items and home goods.
At Lupita’s you can buy
dried herbs, canned hominy, fresh chicharrones (and the rest of the ingredients
you’d need to make pozole
at home), plus leather belts Made in Mexico, fútbol jerseys, and piñatas.
“[Shoppers] know the good thing
are the avocados here,” Ernesto told me. There’s usually a box of Purepecha
avocados from Michoacán – the Mexican state known for producing the best of the
crop – in the cooler in the back. These avocados are named for the indigenous
people living in the highlands of central Michoacán. They have the perfect
creamy texture, rarely a brown spot, and a rich, slightly sweet flavor.
One change Ernersto has
noticed over the years at Lupita's: “Now, American people buy avocados more that Mexicans!”
he says, eyebrows rising above his black Oakley frames. “How about that?”
