My best friend Barb and I traveled to Puerta Vallarta. We spent many days basking in the hot sun, trying to achieve the perfect tan. Other days we went on boating excursions, shopping trips and spent our evenings at a nearby cantina and even did a little Salsa dancing! We enjoyed every part of this trip, but the experience that stands out the most, took place at the local Gigante store.
Gigante is the name of the grocery store. We stopped to pick up some beverages and snacks to keep in our hotel room. As we were shopping, we came upon the bakery department and thought that we could pick up some fresh pastries for breakfast.
We noticed that they don't keep fresh pastries in a glass case, but on glass shelves - with no doors or windows to protect them. Nevertheless, they looked delicious so it seemed worth the risk.
We looked around for wax paper bags like you would find in front of the Krispy Kreme case in the USA. Watching others for an example of how the process of purchasing pastries worked, we found they used pizza pans and salad tongs.
Laughing, we went through the aisles packed with a variety of fresh, fragrant baked goods. Selecting each one with our salad tongs, we put each pastry on our pizza pan, we chose a couple piedras (rocks - raisin and pecan), a cuernos de azucar (a sugar-topped croissant) and my personal favorite, the polvorones (cinnamon shortbread coated in sugar). When our pizza pan was filled, we went to the bakery checkout.
In the USA, our custom is to use checkout lanes that are rectangular, where you put your goods on the counter as you pass through a lane. Purchasers stand on one side of the counter, while the cashier stands on the other side. In Mexico, at least at this Gigante, the counter was round! It was like an island. People moved through the circular line that wrapped around the counter with the cashier at the center.
Approaching the counter, we set the pizza tray down and placed our tongs on a rack attached to the side of the counter. Once you slide your tray to the cashier, he dumped your pastries into a paper bag and placed the pizza pan in a nook at the side of the counter. Now, both the pizza pan and salad tongs were ready for the next customer to use! In the USA, the stores would be shut down by OSHA in a heartbeat for not having food under glass and for not washing the pizza pan and salad tongs between each use, but this is Mexico.
I'm not saying that the Mexican way is bad, but I think I prefer the extra protection that goes into pastry sales here in the USA. I really don't know how much of a difference food in display cases make, but somehow it is reassuring that we have our food display and preparation under OSHA protection.
In the end the risk was worth it. The pastries were delicious, despite the amount of germs they might have collected in the sales process! It was difficult not to think about in the eating process, but we both pleasantly survived the pastry experience.
