Late last fall I heard talk about a new Mexican market that had opened in Apple Valley. Before I could investigate, we went away for three months to Bombay and Seoul and I forgot all about it. And so when my friend Ben P. alerted me last week to the presence of Bodega 42, raving about everything they had bought there, it was only going to be a matter of time before I got there. Checking out their website, I discovered that they also have a restaurant right next to the market, named Homshuk. Accordingly, earlier this week the missus and I drove up to Apple Valley for lunch and a bit of shopping. This is what we found.

Right off the bat, we found a much bigger and shinier restaurant than we were expecting in Homshuk. We entered past a glass-walled kitchen to find a large, bright dining room with an expansive bar. There’s a lot of patio seating outside as well which is doubtless going to start seeing a lot of use in the next month or so. There’s a long drinks menu, heavy on agave spirit-based cocktails and tequila selections; there’s even a pretty decent, if smaller mezcal selection. It being just around noon on a weekday, we passed on booze and got straight to ordering.

While the name of the restaurant indicates Oaxacan origin, the menu largely consists of familiar Mexican dishes that will not test the traditional Upper Midwestern diner too much. The “Casual Eats” section includes tacos, sopes and burritos, each of which can be had with a choice of meat. These meat choices don’t stray very far into the esoteric. There is a selection of specialty tacos that come with fish, octopus, pork belly, birria etc. but there’s no tripa or lengua on offer, for example. If you get an order of tacos (three to an order) they will all come with the same topping. This set us back a bit as we’d hoped to get six tacos and try six of the meats they offer. In the end, the missus opted to get the Street Tacos from their lunch menu (apparently a new thing): a pair of tacos with salad; she got her tacos with the chicken tinga.

Beyond grilled octopus and mole con pollo, the mains don’t contain anything very far out of the ordinary either. The prices being a bit higher than I’d expected to spend at a “give an unheralded new place a try” meal, I got a Platillo with pork in chile verde; the plate included rice and beans, cactus salad and a side of tortillas. Well, the good news is the food itself was quite good. Both the tinga on the missus’ tacos and my pork in chile verde were very tasty as were both salads. The rice and refried beans were a little ho-hum, I have to say.

Something interesting I discovered later is that both the restaurant and the market are owned by the same family that own Andale Taqueria and Mercado in Richfield and Orale up in South Minneapolis. Interesting, because both those places—which are far more casual than Homshuk—have all the meats (and more) on their menus that Homshuk doesn’t. I assume this is due to a different demographic being aimed at here: the clientele at Andale, for example, is predominantly Hispanic. (I’m a very big fan of Andale, by the way and liked my meal at Orale a lot as well.)

But the thing is the market next door—which you can get to through the restaurant itself (as we did) or through its own entrance from the parking lot—is certainly not aimed at anything but a Hispanic clientele first. This is evident both in the scale of the place—which, again, is quite large—and in the selection of goods on offer, from dried goods to fruits and herbs and vegetables to meats and prepared foods. Indeed, in the market’s deli you can get tacos etc. with a wider range of meats along with tamales, tortas, menudo etc. I have to admit I found the hot deli offerings quite alluring when we saw them after lunch and wish more of that was available in the nicer sit-down environment of Homshuk as well. As the kitchen is presumably shared I’m not sure why it couldn’t be.

Anyway, take a look at the pictures of the restaurant, its menu and what we ate and then scroll down for a walk through the market.

After lunch we popped into Bodega 42 for a bit of shopping. We used the door from the restaurant and emerged by their seafood and meat counters. The seafood counter was a little smaller than the video on their website had led me to hope it would be but the carniceria is certainly quite expansive. So too are the vegetable and fruit offerings as you’ll see below. We bought a bunch of fruit and veg and also a wood-grilled whole chicken for dinner that day. This chicken turned out to be extremely juicy and tasty but at $30 perhaps not the greatest deal. Ben tells me that’s how much they paid for the chicken and a host of sides—either he’s confused or we somehow managed to screw things up (the person helping us had less English than we have Spanish between us). So it goes. The next time we’ll be trying other things from the hot deli selection.

The gallery below will give you a sense of what is on offer. Do go and check them out and support what is easily the most extensive Hispanic market south of the river. It’s going to be a go-to for us for sure. The vegetables and fruit are of a very good quality and it’ll be easy enough to add stops there on my regular shopping trips to Mantra Bazar for Indian veg. And next time I’ll remember to check and see if they carry goat as well.

If you’ve eaten more extensively of Homshuk’s menu or from the market deli, please do write in with recommendations. Ditto if there are things you buy at the market that you’d recommend to other people.

Alright, the next restaurant report will be my last from this recent brief Delhi trip. That’ll go up on Tuesday. Tomorrow I’ll have the last whisky review of the month.