Encounters

Mercado de Mexico – in English “Mexican Market” – evokes fairly concrete ideas about what to expect in a shop with this name: colorful walls, Mexican delicacies, cheerful hustle-and-bustle, and great warmth towards customers.

I almost feel a bit worried as the petite woman with delicate features and long, black hair works away with a sharp knife at a two-kilo package of flash-frozen guacamole to separate a 200 gram piece at the request of a customer. “This is one of the reasons I love this store,” the customer explains to me in the meanwhile. Her happy anticipation of the tasty avocado spread is written clearly on her face. She is referring to “Mercado de Mexico” in Munich’s Neuhausen neighborhood and its friendly owner Lourdes González, who wishes to see her customers leave happy and satisfied following her competent advice – as “cliente feliz,” as it is so poetically expressed in Mexico, her native land. When one observes the 38-year old Mexican in conversation with her customers, it seems as if she has been doing nothing else all her life. But the young woman from Puebla had little to do with retail business before she took over a specialty store for Mexican and Latin American groceries in early 2009.

What brought this Mexican woman to Munich? Love. She met the man who is now her husband in 2002 at a workshop near Hanover. After two years of a long-distance relationship, she came to Germany for the first time in 2004, to study quality management for a year. She moved to Munich permanently after their wedding in 2006. When she heard that the previous owner wished to sell Mercado de Mexico, she realised that opportunity had called. As one would expect, the charming store is decidedly colorful, and the Mexican native has lent it a personal note with her loving attention to the interior decoration. I for one am reminded of a tour of Yucatan I took in the past – a little piece of Mexico in the midst of Munich.

Most wanted? Tortillas!

On shelves and in baskets, fiery-hot sauces and mole powder for mixing into the legendary chocolate-chili sauce lie in their colorful packaging next to elegant handicrafts and hand-made piñatas. Next come mate tea from Argentina, Inca-Cola and a special flour for baking rolls (Arepas) in Venezuela and Colombia. But the absolute top-sellers are the maize tortillas that are delivered fresh every week.  They have little in common with the Tex-Mex variety that has been adapted to North American taste buds and is also available in German supermarkets.


I’m struck by the fact that quite a number of customers who entered the store on that Saturday are in fact from Mexico or Latin America. In response to my joking inquiry if they were her personal fan club, Lourdes González modestly dismisses my question with a wave of her hand. “They come because they miss their local food,” she guesses instead. “Or they are Germans who lived for a while in Mexico and are now reveling a little in culinary reminiscences and want to try out their Spanish.” All that may be true. But while Lourdes González is in conversation once again, expertly discussing the differing degrees of hotness of various sauces, a very different conjecture steals up on me: simply that the customers sense with just how much heart and soul this Mexican woman runs her store and how important it is to her to convey her culture to Germans.

Dreams for the future

This friendly, warm-hearted business woman has long since understood that, above all with German customers who are known for their eagerness to learn, simply reciting the foods’ ingredients is not enough. On the contrary, what counts is explaining to customers all the things they can make and do with the foods. Lourdes conveys it all very vividly. I thus learned that nopales, Mexican prickly pear pads, are not only unbelievably tasty, but they are also vitamin-packed and go best with cheese and tomatoes. And by the way, Lourdes González is also a true kitchen fairy who prepares even large-scale Mexican buffets, as she recently did for the Deutsches Museum. She reveals to me that her dream would be having her own catering service. Or offering Mexican snacks in Mercado de Mexico. Why not Mexican cooking courses while we’re at it? Lourdes has no shortage of good ideas for the future, to say the very least!

In demand:
customers’ testimonials about Mercado de Mexico …

Elcy de Gaehler (50)
I go to Mercado de Mexico every four weeks or so, above all because of the tortillas. They’re only available here, in all Munich – always fresh and delicious! I warm them up in a pan, and then I add meat and grated cheese. My son adds a sweet sauce, too. But I prefer the “tough guys” version with a hot sauce.

Sergio Andrei del Valle (29)
I come here pretty regularly, about every two weeks. Why? Authentic Mexican groceries are available here, that as a Mexican I naturally need for cooking. My favorite product is the salsa piccante, a really hot sauce that I put on chips or tacos. Definitely not recommended for German taste buds!

Jeremy Cherlet (20)
This is my first time in Mercado de Mexico, because I really like Mexican food and I’ve heard they have delicious Mexican food here: beans, cheese, mole. My best friend is from El Salvador. He got me onto the Latin American and Mexican food trip.

Deborah Hunsmann (30)
My husband is Mexican, and I lived in Mexico for the last seven years. Now we need a bit of our homeland in Germany. And the service is super, too.

Andrea Davila-Leal (32)
In my opinion, Mercado de Mexico is the best Mexican store in Munich – and the only one that carries original Mexican foods. The atmosphere reminds me of my family’s house in Mexico – so cheerful and colorful. And Lourdes González really knows about the foods and always has great tips ready. I just really like coming here!