Fiesta

You know you want to shop at a place called Fiesta because there are tiny twinkling lights running around the sign like a Vegas casino and a welcoming mascot parrot and, well, it's called Fiesta. It is so festive that a friend of mine first mistook it for a restaurant, and while there is a fully functioning taqueria right inside, this, my friends, is a grocery store. A grocery store that sells perfect mangoes cheap. Where the international aisle has an astonishing array of Japanese sodas and the produce aisle offers five different kinds of banana. Lard is a prominent part of the baking aisle, while avocados are among the impulse buy options in the check out lane. Last week an end cap in produce was brimming with cactus cladodes, a riot of green paddles soon to be nopales, and this week they've magically transformed into a tumble of curvaceous "fairy tale pumpkins" whose fate I can't imagine. I never had a grocery store like this in California, and yet it comforts me to see piles of tomatillos in their papery jackets, even if I leave them in their bin untouched, because what I need today is yogurt and eggs.