Free goat (Rancho Alegre grocery, 18th St.)

Yesterday, with Antonius back from England and Germany, the three of us headed out for a quick stop at our old farmers market in Printers Row and then considered what to do about lunch. Antonius’s suggestion: pick up some carnitas for lunch at home. It’s always hard for us to decide between Don Pedro and Uruapan, so we let the parking gods be in charge. First we cruised by Don Pedro, where it was the usual weekend madness – double parked cars, gridlock in their tiny lot, vendors outside… so we continued west on 18th to Uruapan’s block, between Paulina and Wood. Empty space on the street with more than an hour already on the meter – it couldn’t be better.

But first we headed for the corner of 18th and Wood to pick up tortillas and garnishes for our tacos. The grocery at the southeast corner recently changed hands: formerly La Huerta, it is now Rancho Alegre. As we gathered up an avocado here and a handful of limes there and pondered the tortilla selection an outgoing young woman came up to me and asked in English, “Would you like a taco?” You know I’m not going to say no to that! She led me to a steam table with four foil covered containers. She lifted the lid on the first: “This is carnitas – you know what that is?” I smiled and nodded. She lifted the second. I said, “Oh, barbacoa?” She answered, “Yes, of beef. And this is barbacoa of another meat, chivo.” I immediately asked for a taco of the chivo, and waved Antonius and Lucantonius over to join me. Antonius wanted chivo too, and Lucantonius asked for carnitas. These free samples were not skimpy little things like the postage stamp size of processed sausage product you might be offered at Dominick’s or the Jewels. No, these were generous full sized tacos, with two overlapping corn tortillas (which had been griddled and kept hot in the fourth container of the steam table) appropriately filled with chunks of meat, garnished with chopped onion, cilantro, and an excellent homemade salsa. (The woman who makes the salsa was not there and neither our taco hostess nor the butcher (“¡Yo no sé!”) could tell us what was in it, but I’d guess it included ancho and guajillo chiles.)

The goat was quite good, moist chunks of meat cooked with a bit of chile, mild and not particularly gamey in flavor. We decided to save Uruapan for another day and got a half pound of the goat for us, and another half pound of the carnitas for the shortest member of the family – both meats were priced at $3.99 a pound. (Their carnitas, though not up to the level of the carnitas-only specialists on the street, were good for grocery store carnitas – not at all dried out.) What sold us on getting our ‘lunchmeat’ there was both the quality of the barbacoa de chivo and the charm of the woman offering the free samples. Someone give that girl a position in sales!

Rancho Alegre
1759 W. 18th Street
Chicago
312 733-0883

As Amata said, the goat was quite tasty and the cooked salsa was really very good. The carnitas were grocery store carnitas but a good enough version thereof.

Incidentally, the cooked meats will be available -- as is typical for grocery stores -- on Saturdays and Sundays only.

A nice little, friendly store.

Antonius

Antonius wrote:Incidentally, the cooked meats will be available -- as is typical for grocery stores -- on Saturdays and Sundays only.

A,

Maybe a little warm up is necessary for Saturday's Clark-A-Thon.

Enjoy,
Gary