Super markets
Niles' plethora of ethnic grocers makes town food-shopping mecca
The near northwest suburban community of Niles, best known for its village landmark -- a half size replica of Italy's Leaning Tower of Pisa, built as a water tower in 1932 -- made news last year for two events: the dramatic arrest of its mayor and the opening of a new supermarket.
Reporting on the June felony fraud indictment of Nicholas B. Blase, mayor of Niles since 1961, paled next to the coverage given the August debut of Super H Mart, the Midwest's largest Asian grocery store.
Reporting on the June felony fraud indictment of Nicholas B. Blase, mayor of Niles since 1961, paled next to the coverage given the August debut of Super H Mart, the Midwest's largest Asian grocery store.
Yet for those in the know, Niles, at Chicago's northwest border, long has been a multi-ethnic food-shopping destination.
(Greg Good/Sun-Times illustration)
Yet for those in the know, Niles, at Chicago's northwest border, long has been a multi-ethnic food-shopping destination.
Its six square miles along Milwaukee Avenue boast an extraordinarily rich grocery scene, alive with a diverse collection of some 50 bakeries, delis and grocers showcasing Armenian, Assyrian, Filipino, German, Greek, Indian, Italian, Jewish, Korean, Mexican, Polish, Russian and Serbian specialties and more -- not to mention two white-bread outlets and a gluten-free foods store, plus four Jewels (including two 24-hour stores), an Aldi, Costco and, for now, a 24-hour Dominick's.
Niles' increasingly multicultural mix of businesses prompted the village board to pass an ordinance last year mandating that commercial signs must be predominantly in English. Just south of Niles' border, though, you may need sign language to shop at Renee Gourmet, which sells amazing smoked fish, but whose staff speaks only Russian.
With its mammoth produce section showcasing gorgeous fruits and vegetables from around the world, the 19,000-square-foot Super H Mart should certainly attract more than Asian shoppers. A colossal fresh seafood counter also cleans and cuts all kinds of fish to order. The store boasts its own tofu factory and a crowded food court to boot.
Two more Korean-American supermarkets are slated to open in Niles this year: Grand Mart International Food, part of a Washington, D.C.-based chain of multiethnic food stores, and Assi Plaza Market, owned by the Maryland-based Rhee Bros. Inc. and selling its own line of Asian foodstuffs. Yet for Korean-food lovers, the smaller Asia Super Mart and Hana Super still have attractions, like careful shelf labeling in English, cashiers who have time to offer cooking advice and Hana's colorful, self-serve salad bar full of different kimchis and the vegetable and seafood nibbles Koreans call banchan.
Need rice flour, sorghum flour, chickpea flour or cream of wheat for a recipe? Niles' five Indian groceries stock these ingredients, as well as loads of dried lentils, peas, beans, spices and other staples of Indian cooking. "Many Americans download recipes from the Internet and I can help them out," says Sanjay Mehta, owner of Sai Groceries. He also stocks Indian soda pop such as Thums Up cola andimca, which tastes like Lemon Pledge mixed with seltzer.
Indian Foods & Video helps out inexperienced cooks with a vast selection of curry mixes, while the spacious P & P Asian Foods offers fresh fish and halal meats for scratch cooking.
Nearly every food store in Niles sells fresh bread, typically trucked in daily from Chicago ethnic bakers. You can find great European-style ryes, Middle Eastern pitas, Indian naan and purple-streaked Filipino kalihim ube at various shops, and even bagels, boiled and baked on site at New York Bagels & Bialys.
And if you want the sliced kind in plastic bags, you can get it cheap. "We sell so much white bread," says Jackie Krause, the enthusiastic manager of the Pepperidge Farm Thrift Store. The store also sells bargain-priced cookies and enough Goldfish snack crackers to overflow the Niles Veterans Memorial Waterfall. "We've made it like our little Pepperidge Farm boutique," says Krause, who sets out generous samples.
Up the street, under the large Holsum Bread sign, another bakery thrift discounts Sara Lee breads. Affy Tapple also has a factory store in Niles, selling irresistible caramel-coated treats at prices as low as three for $1.
Talk about irresistible -- such delicious aromas pervade Bacik's and the Niles Polish Deli, it's hard to imagine anyone with a nose leaving either without buying sausage. Besides prepared foods like soups, bigos (hunter's stew) and stuffed cabbage rolls, both delis make a wide variety of kielbasa. Styles include wiejska, the closest to supermarket "Polish sausage"; kabanos, skinny, smoked and air-dried pork or chicken sausage flavored with caraway; krakowska, thick, Cracow-style hot-smoked sausage, and swojska, a very smoky garlic sausage.
"The difference is the spice," says Bozena Filonowicz, who owns Niles Polish Deli with her husband, Eugene.
Smoked meats are also a specialty at Lalich Deli, which makes its own Serbian-style, aged, smoked hams and bacon; sausages like cevapcici and domaca kobasica; whole pickled cabbages, and, on weekends, roast lamb and pig as well as the savory pastries called bureks and pitas. And Greenwood International Market carries a broad-based mix of European-style deli meats and Old World foods.
Meanwhile, Kurt Schmeisser, third-generation owner of Schmeisser's Meats & Sausage, a full-service butcher, is still smoking old-fashioned German specialties like spickgans, heavenly smoked goose, and landjager sausage in the char-lined smokehouses his grandfather built. He's also dry-aging prime beef in his cooler, while using an up-to-the-minute computerized sausage machine to turn out fresh bratwurst. He's also branched out to Polish, Hungarian, Italian and Danish sausages, plus prepared entrees, he says, because "People don't cook as much as they used to."
If don't feel like cooking, you also can pick up heat-and-serve meals from Minelli Brothers Italian Specialty Foods, where the house-made Mama Minelli line of eight-finger cavatelli, stuffed shells, meatballs and more supplements fresh meats, Italian sausage, imported pastas and other essentials for Italian cookery.
Arax Foods, known for its Armenian nazook pastries, lamajun flatbreads and Mediterranean groceries, is adding a fresh meat department that will offer ready-to-cook kebabs, owner Vahan Nighoghosian says.
Grab-and-go hot meals of such favorites as pancit noodles, lechon asado (roast pork) and chicken adobo come from Uni-Mart and Pinoy Food Market, two of the area's five Filipino groceries. Pinoy has great empanadas and the tasty banana-Q, while Uni-Mart sells fresh fish and its own baked goods.
If you're in a hurry and can't settle on one cuisine, a quartet of multi-ethnic stores put everything from Mexican-style meat to Polish pickles to Indian goods under one roof. Customers exclaim, "This, I used to get from Russia!" or come in for special soaps from Greece or Israeli honey cookies, says Joanne Mellos, owner of Sun View Market, where shopping is like a trip around the world. The international mix at Shop & Save Market (a locally owned store not affiliated with Supervalu's Downstate Shop 'n Save chain) includes lots of unusual European and Asian items, beautiful baked goods and routine supermarket items to boot. And stock at Jerry's Fruit & Garden Center has certainly changed since it opened in 1972; these days, cactus paddles nestle up to the parsnips and Asian long beans lie next to the brussels sprouts.
Local freelance writer Leah A. Zeldes was the longtime food editor of the now-defunct Niles Life.