With area’s growth of immigrants
comes a need to supply familiar flavors
By:Jon Steele
Over the past couple of years, a number of Costa Ricans have migrated to Manville from Bound Brook, Somerville and other towns in the area and some are making Manville their first stop in this country.
According to Mainor Aguilar, the owner of Mac Green Forest at South Main Street and Beekman, that number is in the hundreds in Manville and is the key to the success of his shop.
"Manville is a nice, quiet town," says Mr. Aguilar. "Costa Ricans like a safe town like this, one with a sense of community a place where they can walk to stores and go out on the streets at night to visit people and not be afraid."
They also like to be able to enjoy the foods especially the spices and salsas (sauces) whose flavors they remember from their childhood.
And that’s where Mr. Aguilar comes in. Mac Green Forest specializes in Costa Rican imports souvenirs, music, foods, especially foods which he sells in his store and wholesales all over the East Coast and even into the Midwest and upper South (Tennessee, the Carolinas, Kentucky).
Everywhere Costa Ricans have settled, there’s a market for the cookies, drinks, even the canned tuna and sardines that people remember from their childhood. And it all has a "Costa Rican flavor," Mr. Aguilar says, a flavor that is not the same as Mexican or Cuban.
This distinction is not one that "Americans" find easy to make. They may discover that some Hispanic food is not as hot as most of the Mexican dishes they’ve enjoyed and that some Hispanic restaurants serve more plantains than they’ve come to expect from Taco Bell, but when push comes to shove, Amercians tend to lump all Hispanics together. That, Mr. Aguilar notes, is a mistake.
"And the sardines may be the same fish that you find here or in Ecuador, but when it’s processed in Costa Rica, it tastes different," he pointed out. "When they closed the sardine banks in Costa Rica, so that we had to import the sardines from Ecuador and they cost a lot more once we’d canned them, people still preferred the Costa Rican flavor. They were willing to pay more."
Even when the basic ingredients are the same, Costa Ricans are able to distinguish "their" versions from others especially Americans’. Take, for instance, good, old-fashioned canned tuna.
"This tuna," Mr. Aguilar explained, picking up a can imported from Costa Rica, "isn’t all in pieces like you find at the American grocery stores. It’s more like what’s the word? Steak or filet. That’s it. It’s more like filet of tuna than American canned tuna."
So, what do Costa Ricans yearn for the most? The answer is found in the small selection of goodies on display in Mac Green Forest’s small storefront shop in Manville:
Drink syrups Orange, cola and root beer soda aficionados can find the syrup they need to do it for themselves.
Peppers ’nuff said. Americans, by and large, just don’t give peppers, in all their infinite variety, the attention they deserve.
Fruits generally canned, such as Pejivalles, or palm pears. These can be eaten with breakfast or served as an appetizer when you need something sweet.
Powdered milk again, this is the same that’s available here, but different. "Sweeter," Mr. Aguilar says.
Catsup has a little more kick than Heinz or Hunt’s.
Condimento Mixto a sort of super Adobo, the popular seasoning mix, it’s sold in cellophane packs that show off the many-colored component herbs, spices and pepper (an effect that’s spoiled when you use it, since you have to mix it all together before taking a pinch or two for your recipe). "It’s used in all kinds of food," Mr. Aguilar explains, "Meats, vegetables, fish everything."
Chiverre en conserva described as a melon marmalade, or something close to it, it’s used to make sweet quesadillas.
A few items are already making the transition from Costa Rican specialty to American standard just as Adobo did a decade or so ago. As examples, Mr. Aguilar points to coffee and Lizano.
To many of us, of course, coffee is coffee but don’t let anyone who has really developed their palate hear you say so. And to those who’ve trained their palates to appreciate the difference between the various vintages and domains, few rank higher than Costa Rican.
As a consequence, Mr. Aguilar says, "We sell a lot of coffee."
Something else that sells a lot, to Americans as well as Costa Ricans, is Lizano a vegetable sauce with spices. It’s definitely more different in comparison to American sauces than the coffee is to Folgers or Maxwell House. And it’s not that Americans don’t have variations on the subject: Catsup and A-1 leap readily to mind.
But ours doesn’t have quite the kick that this does. It’s not hot, exactly, but you know it’s there when you sprinkle it on something.
And, like the Condimento Mixto, Mr. Aguilar recommends Lizano with "everything" and, so far, experimentation with chicken, hot dogs, hamburgers and london broil bears him out. Next, our cooking guinea pig plans to test Mr. Aguilar’s claim that it makes a good grilling marinade and barbecue sauce.
If it works as well there as it did in the other cases, the popular Costa Rican greeting "La pura vida" may become just as popular an exclamation at the Jersey Shore on the Fourth of July as at soccer matches.