When Mr. Diaz Cooks

He's Finding More Hispanic Products at The Local Supermarket

Eddie Diaz cooks up some home made Puerto Rican food in his small bachelor pad kitchen. (Michael Temchine - Freelance)

When Eddie Diaz cooks a Puerto Rican-style dinner for friends, he heads straight to Giant Food, where everything he needs -- plantains, yuca, passion fruit pulp -- can be found to make his grandmother's recipes.

"That surprised me when I moved here," says Diaz, 24, who grew up in central Puerto Rico and New Jersey before moving to Bethesda to attend American University. "I didn't expect an average supermarket to have so many Spanish products. And they get more and more every time I look."

At the Giant on Westbard Avenue, Diaz can choose fresh plantains in the produce department or, if he is pressed for time, frozen tostones, which are fried green bananas. The store has his favorite bean (pinto) and size (medium) both dried and canned. And hard-to-peel yuca comes fresh or peeled and frozen.

Like Diaz, many Washingtonians who favor foods from back home are finding that more and more supermarkets are stocking shelves with products they want and brands they recognize. Supermarket owners see the buying power of Hispanics -- the fastest-growing segment of the American population and the largest ethnic minority, with 576,000 members in the Washington area, according to the most recent Census Bureau figures.

"We now have a customer base that is much more diverse, and a lot of our Hispanic customers are looking for specific items," says Giant Food spokesman Jamie Miller. One of Giant's newest stores, located on Park Road in Columbia Heights, has the chain's largest selection of products from Mexico and Central and South America. Giant considers the store a prototype.

Hispanics typically spend significantly more on groceries per week than the general U.S. population, $133 versus $91, according to a 2005 survey by the Washington-based Food Marketing Institute. They found that Hispanics, who tend to shop as a family, want stores that cater to their tastes, display bilingual signage and have Spanish-speaking employees.

In December, Shoppers Food Warehouse Corp. opened El Primero Mercado, a sprawling supermarket on Route 28 in Manassas with 10,000 products from Mexico and Central America as well as concepts, such as a fresh tortilla bakery, not found at a typical Shoppers Food & Pharmacy store. A decade ago, the average supermarket in the Washington area was limited to a small selection of Goya products.

Family-owned and in its 70th year, Goya, the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the United States, began selling to supermarkets in the 1950s. The first to carry the brand was a Safeway store in Harlem. "It was difficult. At the time, Goya products were displayed on a small section on top of a cooler," says Conrad Colon, vice president of marketing. "As the Hispanic community grew, so did demand and eventually Goya got its own shelves."

Today, with 1,500 products, Secaucus, N.J.- based Goya can dominate an entire aisle. But not every product goes to every store. Goya, for instance, makes 36 varieties of dried beans in four sizes. The Goya sales staff studies the demographics of each neighborhood before stocking the shelves with a mix of products targeted to a specific regional immigrant community.

To serve the diverse Hispanic community in the Washington area, the company has built a distribution center in Prince George County near Petersburg, Va., which will open in August. For the sizable population from El Salvador, for example, stores sell more pureed red or black beans. A line of frozen, Salvadoran-style pupusas -- corncakes stuffed with meat or cheese or both -- introduced last fall, is doing well.

Shoppers of Andean ancestry will find a new collection of chili pepper pastes, such as aji amarillo , in the weeks ahead. Mexican Americans will discover more jalapeño and chipotle chili-flavored products and tamarind-based drinks.

Eddie Diaz's cupboard is full of Goya cans, bags and boxes stacked one atop another. Once a week he makes a big pot of rice and beans flavored with sazon , a seasoning mix made with monosodium glutamate, salt, dried peppers and spices. This time of year, he spends a lot of time outdoors grilling marinated chicken and pork seasoned with more sazon.

Alongside, he serves fried green bananas with a choice of toppings and always starchy yuca covered with a pungent garlic and onion sauce. Passion fruit pulp is mixed with water and sugar for a tangy island drink.

Someday, Diaz plans to open the first high-end Puerto Rican restaurant in downtown Washington. He will use the recipes his family has passed down for generations at its farmsteads near Barranquitas in the central part of the island. "They need one here," Diaz says of his restaurant concept. "These are flavors most people don't know."