I LOVE hispanic grocery stores. LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them.
I was heading to a hispanic grocery store to search out items for one of the Tex-Mex dishes I was bringing to the Ron Paul debate watching party at his HQ in Henderson. I planned to go to Mariana's but I made a wrong turn, while not paying attention, and saw that Marketon was there so, whatever, might as well try it out.
Upon walking in on 11/20/11, I was pleasantly surprised by how large the place was. This isn't some hole in the wall store, it's a full fledge grocery store, complete with an extensive hot food counter, a bakery and an enormous butcher counter.
I spent an hour and a half browsing the aisles and drooling over the housewares and spices. The people who worked here were friendly, but I did have to pull out some of my basic spanish, mainly because I'm not going to throw a fit because I need to translate "freshly rendered lard."
Speaking of lard, skip the prepackaged stuff and go straight to the hot food counter to purchase the fresh stuff for literally $2.
I had a cart full of speciality stuff and walked out for $45. Yes!