La Guatemalteca

Small store hidden in the back of an old building with no advertising of any kind and worse part " Unprofessional staff".

I am not a big fun of visiting those stores, even thought, I am from Central America as well. However, a friend of mine asked me to come with him and buy some "cultural sttuf". The lady at the register was on the phone when we walked in, we spent about 15 min looking around ( were we not texting?) and she was still on the phone. We wanted to pay, she put more attention to the person on the phone rather than us. Insane!!! We left and she seemed to be very excited to be gossiping or chatting on the phone.

Tucked in a little alcove off of Colfax, La Guatemalteca most certainly offers a wide range of canned, bagged, bottled and baked items from Guatemala, Central America and beyond.

However, the purpose of my review is to tell you about the small canteen in back (I inadvertently referred to it as a restaurant when speaking to the lady behind the counter, which amused her to no end). This part of the business seems to do a brisk trade with the primarily Spanish-speaking clientele.

On the morning I went, they had two dishes available - Sopa de Pata de Res (cow-foot soup) and Puerco con Frijol Blanco (pork and white-bean stew).

That early in the day, the soup was just not what I had in mind. So, I tried the Puerco.

This was no ordinary pork-and-beans, no sir. Huge, juicy, on-the-bone chunks of pork combined with meltingly soft white beans to create (with the help of a thin tomato-based sauce) a dish which transcended the sum of its parts. Paired with a tangy-tart tamarind drink from the shop cooler, this was a very nice way to start the day.