ottawa foodies

:( Went there today to try tacos, no tacos :(
Don't know when they stopped, but no more tacos being offered at the mercado.

I have shopped here for years but I find their prices a little high for canned food like peppers and beans. Can anyone suggest another store? La Tiendita?

I love this place--great selection of latin food and warm, helpful service. However, I can't recommend the tamales: The chicken ones were dry and crumbly, made with masa harina for tamales as opposed to masa fresca. The pork ones were wrapped in banana leaf (nice) but were made from masa harina for tortillas, hence pasty and relatively flavourless. Moreover, it seems that they did not clean the chiles before preparing the pork, so there was grit in them (icky).

This place is great. The only place were ive found good panella and queso fresca. Still have not got to try the tacos:(

I went in to Mercado Latino on Saturday morning. They were selling hot food (pork tacos) so I got an order to go. You get 3 tacos for $6.50, and the filling is all meat, no cheese or other tex-mex perversions. They don't come with any side dishes. Since I was taking mine with me I just had them dress them with everything. If you eat in they put the tacos in front of you with a few plates of finely chopped onions and cilantro and usually some lime wedges.
I also bought some annato powder, some epazote and a bottle of Cajeta (thick caramel syrup made of goat milk--not cheap at $7.99 a bottle but I'm keeping it for a crepe party I'm having in a while.)
Service here is very friendly. The shoplady's teenage son translated a few of the Cajeta labels into English for me, and when my tacos somehow didn't make it into my shopping bag, the guy who cooked them chased me down the block to give them to me!
Edited to add that I was warned that the salsa was very hot. I had them put it on the tacos anyway. It did indeed bring tears of joy (and pain) to my eyes.