This is no ordinary convenience store

ecuador through a glass door

Hi, everyone!

I’ve missed you. Our family trip to Orlando to visit Mickey Mouse was really incredible. For my very first visit to Disney (at the ripe old age of 42), I came away floored by the sheer scale, engineering marvel, and pure unadulterated saccharine joy of the place.

It was the first entire family vacation we’ve taken in about 20 years, and it was really wonderful learning things about my parents I never knew, like the fact that my 72-year-old mom, who’s barely five feet tall, loves rollercoasters. Unbelievable. I did come away with some mixed feelings about the machinations behind Disney, but I’ll chalk that up to having visited for my first time as a boring grown-up instead of as Little Dennis. (No relation to Little Debbie.)

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We didn’t end up getting a ton of time to explore the surrounding area, but we did manage to sneak out for one day to see Davida’s best friend in Tampa.

There we had Cuban sandwiches (Tampa is where they originated from), and learned that the ones in that area marvelously contain salami, which boosts the tanginess of the standard yellow mustard. Then we stumbled upon some really interesting things like a dish called deviled crab, which are basically crab croquettes, a hyperlocal favorite—seemingly like what a pizza puff is to Chicago.

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Oh, and Davida got her very first taste of Waffle House, which was one of her favorite meals during our visit to Florida. And no, we did not go at 3 a.m. plowed off our asses, though that was a tempting idea.

When we returned to Chicago, we finally declared that we’d visit a somewhat mysterious shop in our neighborhood. It’s a store we travel by multiple times a week on commutes to work, on the way to run errands, and during long walks. Yet after five-plus years in the neighborhood, we never happened to step inside the front door.

It turns out we’ve done ourselves a massive disservice, because we didn’t even realize we had Ecuadorian food in our neighborhood. And better yet, from a convenience store.