Okay, so if your idea of a Saturday mid-morning brunch includes mimosas and fluffy, berry-stuffed crepes, this may not be for you.
We just want to give you fair warning.
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Because instead of a frosty flute of champagne and orange juice, you’re going to be sipping on a Jarritos, straight out of the bottle. The tamarind flavored one. Effervescent, but not too sweet. And those ain’t crepes. They’re tortillas. Corn. Stuffed with carne asada. Spit-roasted pork al pastore. Tripas.
We’ve no idea what the Spanish word is for “brunch.” But we do know: this is one fine—though unusual—place to enjoy it.
El Morelia Super Mercado is an expansive, pueblo-sized Mexican-South American grocery store on St. Charles Rock Road, in Bridgeton. All week long a constant parade of customers looking for food and cooking supplies and other stuff of a Latin American bent come here. The aisles are fully stocked with food, canned, dried, fresh, and everything else your kitchen needs for comida latina.
Pinatas dangle from the ceiling. Hefty metal tortilla presses. Rough, black, shallow-bottomed mortars carved from volcanic stone; they’re molcajete, for grinding your own chiles and spices. If that’s too much work, there are racks of the same ingredients and more, dried and packaged. Mexican oregano. Ground annatto. Cinnamon bark, pungent epazaote, powdered ancho. Palo azul, which is kidney wood, about which the less we know, we figure, the better.
There’s a bakery in the back, turning out sweet dessert breads, crusty bolillos, crunchy, paper-thin buneulos. The meat department is a vegan’s version of the 10th Circle of Hell, with cuts you didn’t know were actually on a cow and parts o’ pig that are—exotic. Savvy local cooks know this is the place for osso buco-worthy shanks at a fraction of what they would cost in most other places. And if you think there’s only one kind of pork rind, Morelia’s provides a crispy, crunchy revelation. There are the crackly, airy puffs you’ve eaten before. But also rinds with a layer of fat left on, salty and chewy, and another kind, with a bit of meat clinging to the deep-fried skin, that are more like a meal than a snack.
The shoppers come on Saturday and Sunday morning, too, to El Morelia. But also showing up are those who arrive from all over the area, looking for the tacos. On weekend mornings, and serving up until five in the afternoon, El Morelia’s entrance turns into a pop-up taqueria. A grill, a vertical spit for a spire of roast pork. Folding tables in front with condiments. It isn’t large. And you don’t come here for a lot of ambiente.
The menu, hanging up on the wall, doesn’t take long to contemplate. There is al pastore, a succulent roast pork, along with carne asada beef, and tripas, pan-grilled beef intestines chopped finely. Tongue. Marinated chicken. Mexican sausage.
Your choice of meat is scooped by the guy behind the counter into a pair of beautifully chewy, warm corn tortillas. The fixings are up to you—and it’s one heck of a fixin’s bar.
Salsa, chopped cilantro, sliced jalapenos, radishes, onion: You can doctor your tacos with as much of any of them as you like.
Then you take your plate into the store. A couple of tables, each with their own big, earthenware bowls with green and red sauces, and a narrow little bar with stools. Note that the green sauce is spicy, piquant. The red sauce makes “spicy” seem like a distant memory. It is powerful stuff.
You’ll be sharing your table with a constant parade of families and couples and those dropping in by themselves, some of whom have just finished shopping, others on their way. All of them seem to know where some of the best tacos in town can be enjoyed though, in a location for brunch that’s decidedly different.
El Morelia Super Mercado
12005 St. Charles Rock Road
Bridgeton
314-209-0014
Tacos served Saturdays and Sundays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
