Mi Pueblo opens a different world of flavors to Alabama, one aisle at a time
Dulce River is CEO of Mi Pueblo Supermarket with locations in Homewood and Pelham. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)
Looking for fun and adventure and new, fresh flavors? Go grocery shopping at Mi Pueblo. Because Mi Pueblo is more than just a supermarket. It’s an experience.
In addition to foods from all over the world, there’s a café, a bakery and a snack bar in both the Homewood and Pelham stores. The festive atmosphere throughout these two multicultural supermarkets – with picado banners of Mexican folk art in the cafés, piñatas of all kinds in the candy aisles and mariachi music in the produce departments – makes grocery shopping interesting and even fun.
“Mi Pueblo is not your typical grocery store,” says Dulce Rivera, CEO of Mi Pueblo Supermarket. “We consider ourselves an international market, and that is because even though … the majority of our clients are Hispanic or of Latino descent, we carry a lot of products that are shared in different cultures. So, you have all the spices that you could possibly need for Indian cuisine or Asian or Caribbean. We do focus primarily on products from Mexico, Central America and South America … but we have things from all over the world.”
Family-owned Mi Pueblo first opened nearly 20 years ago in a small location in Pelham, which rapidly grew into a larger store. Likewise, they started off small in Homewood, quickly outgrew that space and then, 10 years ago, moved into the larger, current location on multicultural Green Springs Highway.
Dulce says her family started the business to feed a need.
“Mi Pueblo translates to ‘my town,’” she says. “When this supermarket was opened up, my father, who is the founder of the business, wanted everyone to feel like they were home.” He wanted to offer them familiar ingredients to make the dishes they love, she adds.
“We are Mexican, so our first thought was to bring Mexican products to the Mexican community here in Birmingham, just because that was what we knew and that was the larger population. It still is the larger, predominating population, but we slowly saw the need that the community had for products of Central and South America. So, we started incorporating those.”
Then something interesting happened.
“We would see people of other cultures and backgrounds come in, and they were looking for the same products, but they would use them differently in their food,” Dulce says. “So, in doing research and opening our minds up, we saw that we really do share a lot of love through our food in different cultures, and that’s just beautiful.”
Today, Mi Pueblo’s customers, Dulce says, “are pretty much anyone who loves to cook or loves food.”
The stores make shopping fun for them.
Sometimes the mariachi music is subbed out for an important fútbol game or Mexican pop music. The candy aisle is a riot of color and sugar and spice-coated sweets. The bakery – with cases of orejas, conchas, sema de trigo, and some of the best churros in town – takes up nearly an entire wall of the store. To shop this department, get a basket or bag and gloves or tongs from the counter, pick what you want and then pay for it in the bakery. Look for popular (and hyper-seasonal) pan de Muertos (Day of the Dead bread) in the pastry case beginning mid-October.
The meat department – with all kinds of fish and shellfish, beef, pork, chicken, marinated meats, cooked meats and enormous pieces of chicharrón (fried pork belly) – occupies the back wall. Look to see if there’s a line before you walk up. (Pro tip for your next tailgate: Get the cooked carnitas from the meat department, tortillas from the bakery, some onion and cilantro from the produce area, and salsa from the café. Roll up with these ingredients for street tacos, and you’ll be the hero. Alternately, there’s a grilling package with about 13 pounds of marinated, seasoned, ready-to-cook meats (chicken, chorizo and beef) for $55. This comes with either soft drinks or a bag of charcoal.
There also are huge pots and pans and all sorts of cooking utensils here. Name a spice, and you’ll find it. There are big cans of jalapeños, hominy, beans and more artfully arranged in huge circular displays. There are big stacks of fruit juices and corn meal and Mexican lollypops. There are more kinds of tortillas and chips and country-specific salsas, sauces and cremas than anywhere else in town. The cleaning aisle is quite impressive. There are items at Mi Pueblo you’ll need to Google. That’s OK. The staff does, too. That’s how they grow and serve a growing clientele.
Dulce says: “If you see any one of us and you’re looking for a particular item, even if we don’t know what it is, we will use Google. We will find it. Usually we do have it and other times – very, very seldom – we don’t carry it. But then we find out what it is, and we do our research, and we start bringing it in store for people to buy. That is actually how we’ve grown our different product selections because people ask for it. And if people are asking for it, that means there’s a need for it.”
But Mi Pueblo can be overwhelming.
“It is definitely an experience,” Dulce says. Many people have asked her if there’s “a way to do Mi Pueblo Supermarket?”
Turns out, there is.
First rule of any grocery shopping outing: Don’t shop on an empty stomach. “So, you come in and you eat lunch at the buffet,” Dulce says. “Grab yourself a taco or something. And then you go over to our bakery, and you get your dessert. And then, while you’re eating your dessert, you go around the store. You start shopping for your produce, different meats and go down all the aisles. And by then, you’ve worked up an appetite probably and have room for a little snack. You can grab a fruit cup on your way out and you have a nice, little snack on your way home or for after you get home and put up all the groceries.”
Or you can simply go to Mi Pueblo for breakfast, lunch or dinner.
The café is open every day from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. The extensive buffet is the main draw here (all you can eat for $13), but you can order from a menu, too. “We serve anything from pupusas, which are Salvadorian, to gorditas, which are Mexican,” Dulce says. “On the weekends, we’ll have menudo, which is a stew – beef tripe stew – and it is delicious. I grew up on it. It is wonderful for a Sunday morning breakfast, very traditional.” There are award-winning tacos (whatever kind you’re craving) as well as tortas and burritos. The cóctel de camarón (Mexican-style shrimp cocktail) is not quite gazpacho, not quite ceviche but absolutely fresh and delicious.
The buffet, however, is the most popular way to go. “It’s always changing,” Dulce says. “We do have two soups – we have a beef stew and a chicken soup. These are the two most popular items. They’re very comforting. They just hit home. I personally love the buffet. I probably eat that maybe three to four times a week just because it’s changing; I don’t really get bored of it. It’s just really authentic food.”
All the dishes are made from scratch with traditional recipes using meats and vegetables fresh from the market. If you see a woman shopping in the produce area – a layer of potatoes two-deep on the bottom of her cart, 20 or 30 ears of corn, more peppers than you’d know what to do with – that woman (the woman not bothering with individual produce bags) is likely shopping for the café.
Mi Pueblo caters all sorts of events, from birthday celebrations to corporate gatherings to private dinners. You’ll see their big, colorful, busy truck with tacos, quesadillas and fruit in a cup at Fiesta, Alabama’s largest Hispanic festival; Bare Hands Inc.’s popular Día de los Muertos festival; and the Alabama State Fair.
Don’t leave an excursion to Mi Pueblo without stopping by the snack bar near the front door. “The most popular thing in our snack bar is competitive actually,” Dulce says. “We have our strawberries and cream, which is a very popular item. It’s fresh, cut-up strawberries with a sweet cream sauce in it. You can add coconut flakes, raisins, nuts, if you want, and cinnamon. It’s very delicious. Then we have our mango cups – you can find the best mangos here. They are sliced up, put in a cup. You put lime, salt, chili powder and chamoy on it. The best!” Mixed fruit in a cup – mango, melons, cucumber, papaya and jicama – gets the same delicious, sweet-salty-spicy treatment.
Mi Pueblo, built around community, is dedicated to the community that built it.
Dulce says, “We weren’t looking to actually run a business like this except that we saw a need in the community, and we filled it. And now, we like to partner with different nonprofit organizations around town to give back to the community because they’ve given us so much.” Mi Pueblo has long supported Fiesta, which is celebrating its 22nd year on Saturday, Sept. 28, in Linn Park. They partner with ¡HICA!, the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama. And Mi Pueblo also partners with the Birmingham Chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier International, which works to empower women throughout the state in food- and hospitality-related fields through grants and scholarships and mentoring.
The business also reaches out to local schools. Right now, in the middle of Hispanic Heritage Month, there are school tours at both Mi Pueblo stores.
“What I’m most proud of is the aspect that we are still very much a family-run business,” Dulce says. “My father started this business 20 years ago almost. I’m now running this business, and we’re keeping it as a family business because … that’s who we’re serving. We’re serving families in our community and helping keep that closeness and that wonderful tradition of family (going). That’s really important to us.”
This dedicated commitment to customers – from any and all backgrounds – is what makes Mi Pueblo special.
“We are working very, very hard to market ourselves as an inviting community – an inviting business – so everyone can feel welcomed when they walk in this store,” Dulce says. “I really hope that everyone leaves with a positive experience here. I hope so. We just continue to strive for that because we are, at the end of the day, we are in the United States of America, and this is a country made of different cultures coming together. We really are a melting pot, and that’s what we focus on here in Mi Pueblo. That we are a melting pot of different countries and different backgrounds. And we’re just here trying to love each other and love our cultures and love our food.”
Dulce Rivera is CEO of Mi Pueblo Supermarket. (Michael Tomberlin / Alabama News Center)
216 Green Springs Highway
Homewood, AL 35209
205-878-8889
3060 Pelham Parkway
Pelham, AL 35124
205-685-1446
http://mipueblosupermarket.com/
Hours:
Grocery: 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day
Café: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day
Traditional Chilaquiles Rojos
By Mi Pueblo Supermarket
The Mi Pueblo Supermarket recipe for traditional chilaquiles rojos is sure to please. (Susan Swagler / Alabama News Center)
Ingredients
Tortilla chips
4 Roma tomatoes
2 dried guajillo chiles
¼ onion
1 clove garlic
1 Tbsp chicken bouillon
Salt to taste
2 Tbsp oil
Optional toppings:
Mexican sour cream (crema)
Cotija cheese
Sliced avocado
Eggs (any style) or steak or chicken
Instructions
- In a pot, boil the Roma tomatoes and guajillo chiles until the tomatoes and chiles have softened.
- Transfer the tomatoes and chiles to a blender, along with the onion, garlic, salt, chicken bouillon and 2 cups of boiled water. Liquify until smooth.
- In a sauté pan, add your preferred oil. Once heated, add the salsa and bring to a light simmer.
- Once the salsa is simmering, add in the tortilla chips. Stir and make sure to coat all the chips in salsa.
- Serve in a bowl with the toppings of your choice and enjoy!
Mi Pueblo offers recipe ideas. (Susan Swagler / Alabama News Center)
Susan Swagler has written about food and restaurants for more than three decades, much of that time as a trusted restaurant critic. She shares food, books, travel and more at www.savor.blog. Susan is a founding member and past president of the Birmingham chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier International, a philanthropic organization of women leaders in food, wine and hospitality whose members are among Birmingham’s top women in food.
