Markets & Foodstuffs
Comfort Foods/Desert Gardens
Founded in 1989 by local former fast-food owner Mark Harden and now an enormous sauce & salsa operation. Highly portable spice packets, soups, dip, bread, and dessert mixes form the Comfort Foods conglomerate.
Erda Gardens
The only all-local, biodynamic CSA in town, composed of several farming sites in the South Valley. If you can’t join in as a shareholder, Erda also sells their food during the summer at the farmers markets in Nob Hill and Downtown.
Farmer's Market
Year-round, this cramped grocery deals local, from Dixon apples to Hatch chile. The small freezer’s stocked with tamale-makings, tortillas, y todo Nuevo Mexicano. It’s rare we get to parrot with sincerity, “a fast nickel beats a slow dime.”
La Montañita Co-op Market
A member-owned source for organic food, health, and beauty care products. The bulk aisle is expansive, the meat top-notch, and the best produce in the city. This month, prime-quality organic thanksgiving turkeys!
Pro's Ranch Market
Pro’s is Jimi Hendrix and all other grocery stores are the guitar…guy from Coldplay. Whassisname. Though based in California, they’re our premier Mexican mercado, and so authentic you should probably be nose-deep in 501 Spanish Verbs on the way in.
Skargard Farms (Formerly Los Poblanos Organics)
Delicious, healthy-looking (and –tasting!) produce, mostly grown on the Skarsgard farm in the North Valley. Given the quantity and quality of the vegetables, the price is pretty good – a mite cheaper than you’ll find in the markets.
Southwest Cash & Carry
Where else can you get a jar of Sadie’s Salsa for $2.50? One of those places you went to years ago, forgot about, suddenly remembered, and decked yourself for overpaying somewhere else all those years.
Talin Market
Their aisles are named by capital city (Havana, Saigon, etc.), which is both convenient and frustrating, if you failed high school geography. Their cache of hard-to-finds, from curries to South American teas to Asian hot sauces, is relieving and intimidating in equal measure.
The Fruit Basket of Albuquerque
High-quality produce at about half supermarket prices, and healthier-looking. They also have Mexican colas (real sugar in glass bottles!) and a line of superhero-shaped piñatas that’d make any cholo think twice (about his little cousin Cheto’s birthday party).
The Grove Cafe & Market
One of the few exclusively organic offerings in town; a refreshingly ambitious philosophy from owners Lauren and John. The airy, covered patio mirrors the inside space, and they heat it in winter!