Our first stop was here, at a strip mall near Montgomery High School in Otay Mesa. This is the strip mall anchored by CVS (formerly Alpha Beta back in the 70's) and Bank of America. It's changed over the decades and I literally have not driven in this parking lot in at least 20 years!
Unfortunately, the bakery was closed on Sunday....
I was curious about this place because there are three similarly named bakeries in the South Bay.
There is the Gonzalez Panaderia on Hollister, plus another one in San Ysidro that we were planning to check out that same day. So we nixed this bakery and ended up to the Holy Land.
The Holy Land Market that is...
It's just down the street next to a beauty college and a Giant New York pizza place.
They had a good selection of tropical fruits at reasonable prices. Thing is, the fruits are pretty ripe, like eat them today ripe. Below, persimmons, tangerines, mangos and papayas...
Watermelons and oranges anyone?
I was excited to see my favorite type of guavas here, the small yellow ones. These are the kinds I like to use for Sinigang (Philippine sour soup). These have the most intoxicating aroma when ripe (I love it!).
In addition to fruits and select produce, they had dry, canned and jarred Mexican goods (salsas, peppers, sauces, beans, etc). There was also a small section of baked goods (not sure how fresh they were though).
There was also a meat counter and a section for ordering fruit salads and tostilocos. But wait, I spied something at the very end of the counter in the bins...
which were these...cactus prickly pear fruits, known as "tuna". The last time I bought one of these was at Otay Farms Market, but it was green. See the whitish marks on the fruits? They are cleaned of their thorns. If you pick these out in the open, they are covered with long prickly and painful thorns.
There were more packaged fruits at the counter where you pay. I saw that they had peeled red tuna there, only $1.49 for a package of nine so I bought one. There were bags of cut up nopales (cactus pads) as well. The red tuna are fruits of the Saguaro cactus.
The gentleman at the register was impressed that I knew what "tuna" were.. He said most of his Filipino customers normally do not eat cactus (the pads or the fruit). It's cultural I suppose. It's not in the Filipino cuisine to eat this, but I believe in trying things at least once to give it a shot. I like the resourcefulness of the Mexican culture because they utilize every part of the cactus.
The man also told me that he's seen this juice being sold at upscale markets (catering to whites) and selling for a lot more. He told me that the juice was very healthy and was happy that I was buying a package. The juice, from what I've read, is also used to make jams and candy.
I bough a package of cut up watermelon for TC (also $1.49), in addition to the red prickly pear along with one Bubu Lubu candy ($1; those taste good after they've been frozen). I was curious to try the red kind because I remember seeing the pink "tuna" ague fresca at Vallarta Market a few weeks before.
As I said earlier, the fruits here are are the ripe side. These cactus pears had a texture kind of like watermelon but a bit more dense. It looks like a long red kiwi and has a similar taste as well. There were also A LOT of seeds. My friend, La Ley eats the seeds but I found them annoying.
The smell reminded me of papaya which I am not fond of. The taste was faintly sweet and tasted a bit like watermelon and kiwi mixed together. Very unusual and refreshing this was. I'm glad I tried it.
Holy Land Market
750 Beyer Way
San Diego, CA 92154
No phone number that I could find.
There is no website, of course, but here are the two lone yelp reviews.
Previous visit to the Holy Land Market:
May 2012 where we also went to the now defunct Strawberry Field in Chula Vista.
My in-laws used to like shopping here because it was very close to where they live. They really like buying the inexpensive fruits there. TC liked the pre-cut fruits. It's a little out of the way and nothing really to make a special trip out for, but since we are down in the area every weekend, it was worth it to stop by again.
In our quest to find the "other" Panaderia Gonzalez, we headed out to San Ysidro...
2 comments:
We have a guava tree and I'm thinking of maybe making some guava jam for Christmas or something! I like the color of the "tuna" - very bright! The flavor sounds very refreshing from the way you describe it.
hi mary, we have a guava tree too but it's the big gross ones (softball size) that i HATE! they taste so green and raw. i like these small ones better.
as for the "tuna", there are different varieties, red, green, and even a yellow one! I've only seen the yellow in pix. you can find these prickly pear fruits at Mexican markets.
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