Barbur World Foods

This Middle Eastern grocery in Southwest has become something of a standby for me. They carry the items you would expect to find, i.e. labne cheese, flatbreads, turkish delight, all kinds of olive oil, teas, regional cereal grains... But they also have an excellent produce department and meat counter, and there's a deli where you can buy all kinds of wonderful offerings: fatayer, kibbe bites and bulgur pilaf, to name just a few. And their prices on most items are quite reasonable.

But the secret of the place is its beer. Occasionally you will see a customer stride purposefully to the back of the store and disappear. You expect them to turn, maybe study the chip shelves, but they seem to walk right through the back wall.

At either back corner there is a swinging door, darkly colored and very inconspicuous, essentially a secret panel. Behind them is a large room, a walk-in cooler stocked with an impressive selection of beers and ciders. I even found a large pint-plus bottle of Hitachino red ale in there, the first time I've ever seen it in that size bottle and only the second place I've seen it on the shelf, after Uwajamiya in Raleigh Hills. There's German beers, Asian beers, regional beers, Dutch, French, Belgian... They even have my new favorite Schlinkerla Rauchbier. And all in a nice roomy space on open shelves. No squatting in front of foggy cooler doors, no sharing the aisle with people that want to study cheese labels. Just rank after rank of carefully chilled beer.

Their wine selection is also quite respectable, and if you study the cooking and juice aisles carefully you'll probably come away with some flavorful and inexpensive mixers. For one thing, they carry large, inexpensive bottles of lime and lemon juice, an item I hate to buy in American groceries and liquor stores because it's always packaged in a tiny, impractical container and always seems too expensive. At Barbur Foods they're considered a staple and offered in staple sizes and prices.

But probably the greatest revelation is the easy access to wine-bottle sized units of grenadine syrup. True, the label says "Pomegranate Syrup", but that is precisely what grenadine syrup is. And a big bottle costs between five and seven dollars.

Drop in sometime and see what they have to offer. I guarantee you'll leave with more than was on your list. Perhaps you'll even chat with Mr. Attar, the owner, who also operates the very fine Ya Hala restaurant out in Montavilla. Don't hesitate to ask him ingredient or food questions; he likes to mingle with his customers.