Adios Ole Ole

Sometime last month I decided to pay a visit to the local Spanish food market. This is a really tiny place on the corner of Allen School Road and Bonita Road in Bonita. When I parked, I noticed a "For Sale" sign in the window. Uh oh. Inside I chatted with the owner (who is Mexican, not Spanish) who told me that because of the economy, they were selling their inventory and moving up North to help out with a local Mexican restaurant (forgot the name) in Encinitas. Yikes, that's pretty far! So, the store itself was quite sparse inside. I was able to pick up a few items...

The package on the left were some Spanish tapas crackers. We tried this when we got home, but they were so dry and flavorless even after we dipped them in hummus (not very Spanish, I know) or interspersed the bites with Manchego cheese. I imagined that these crackers were almost as bad as the hardtack that sailors from ages ago would gnaw on to stave off their hunger during long voyages overseas. Do I have an overactive imagination or what? And the second package is a practically ready made Spanish tortilla kit. It's canned seasoned potatoes and onions...all you have to do is add the eggs and cook it in a pan on the stove top. Bert likes these so I picked up a few.
The box had paella season and the jar on the right were garlic cloves in olive oil. The owner recommended that I try it because he thought I might enjoy it. Unfortunately I didn't. Bert and I tried it when we got home and while the garlic flavor isn't that pronounced, the flavor tasted kind of metallic.
I bought 2 packages of their Chistorra, at $9.75, they are way cheaper than Pata Negra's which sells theirs for $13.00 or more. This is the sausage I used in my paella. I also bought the last chuck of Manchego Cheese. I was looking for a type called "Mahon" but they were already out of it. I ended up inserting paper thin slices of the cheese in between rustic bread that I spread with fig preserves which I then topped with prosciutto. I ended up grilling the sandwiches and yes, they were very delicious!

Here's a package of paella rice...

So long and farewell. Hasta la vista Baby. Too bad Ole Ole didn't last. They suffered from lack of customers and also lack of inventory. They didn't really have a lot of items there and the location wasn't really ideal. Perhaps they would have survived if they were in the more hip and happening Eastlake area instead of old Bonita.