El Zocalo Supermarket — Attraction in Haines City

My wife and I are new to the area. We moved to to Poinciana about three months ago from out of state and did not bring much with us There was a lot we needed...furniture, home goods, furniture, kitchenware, furniture, and furniture. So, on our many outings to get things, like furniture, we had passed by El Zocalo Supermarket a number of times, but yesterday our outing was to go to El Zocalo Supermarket to see what different types of things we would find there.

What we didn't expect to find was a real old school type butcher chop, and fish stand in the back of the store with great looking meats and fish at really decent prices.

Although we only went to scope it out for the future, we wound up buying some great looking pork chops, T-Bone steaks and shrimp. Add to that dried yellow split peas (for soup), coarse cornmeal, and their in-house, home-made flour tortillas (which we used as wraps for our home made shrimp and chicken fajitas, and then as wraps for our home made moo-shu chicken), AND then--best of all--we discovered the Mexican bakery and fast food restaurant in the supermarket featuring all types of freshly made dishes, which people were gobbling up!

We didn't eat buy any prepared food (we ate before going to the supermarket), but we will next time. Although we didn't throw down any burritos or enchiladas, we did bring home a bunch of freshly baked Mexican pastries and bread. What we didn't know was, one of the breads we bought was actually a Jalapeno Cheese Roll--what a delightful surprise--jalapenos and cream cheese embedded in the middle of the roll--I don't really like cream cheese, but this was quite a good surprise.

A simple outing to a supermarket not only turned into a great, and fun experience and afternoon, we also discovered a great alternate supermarket to our local Aldi and Publix.

We will certainly become...

Nice place to find different and hard to find hispanic items. The influence seems to be more Mexican than "islander" like Puerto Rican, Dominican, etc as it's in the "Little Mexico" part of Haines City and Davenport. Great selection of Mexican candies! This place was my "gateway" to my Tamarindo candy obsession. I also found out that i really enjoy "Chicharrones de Harina" a little too much. I am not typically a baked goods kind of person, so they bakery items I tried didn't appeal to me. They were all dry and just seemed like the same thing...but there were people there buying them in bulk, so they must be good. There are only two selections of Agua Frescas now (and one is usually horchata), but they are still enjoyable. The hot food is nice and offers different things now and again like lamb. The ladies behind the line are friendly enough. Register ladies are not that warm and engaging, but the ones at Publix are only marginally more friendly. The prices in the groceries are high. Meat prices are more reasonable I think but I haven't shopped in that section. The parking lot looks like it was paved on top of a rip tide. LOL. The water fountain at the front entrance adds a really nice touch; more of the Mexican...

This is the biggest store for all of ur hispanic shopping needs. They have all kinds of stuff. People that I've run into working there are sort of grumpy but i would be too if i worked somewhere with huge, long isles that only one cart would fit down. If u play chicken with someone (u guys both walk towards each other to the middle of the isle) u either have to back all the way out or make a 7 point turn to get back out of the isle. They're making a store next to it, a meat market, and i think they are moving the restaurant in the building adjacent to it so i hope that means a remodel of the main store cuz even the restaurantduring certain times of the day is very crowded and hard to get through. My grandparents like to eat there but my grandma can't barely get her scooter thru the maze of chairs and tables. They make fresh bread, daily I believe and they have fresh tortillas and desserts. Depending on what time you go there, you can even watch them make it. They have pinatas, you can send money to loved ones, don't quote me on this but I'm pretty sure they do birthday cakes too? They have a lot of Mexican candy there that I haven't seen...