Author: Tomohiro Nishimura

Program of Study: Master of Laws (LLM), Law School

Asian food items at Mariano’s (Photo taken by author)

Description: Have you visited a supermarket in Downtown Chicago? I will show you how fascinating they are from the perspective of various product lines that reflect the ethnical diversity in Downtown Chicago.

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Transcript (provided by author):

Welcome to the ELI’s Finding Chicago Global Perspectives Podcast Series for AEPP 2024. I’m your host, Tomohiro Nishimura, and I’m currently enrolled in the University of Chicago’s Law School.

When I arrived in Chicago at the beginning of August and first visited a supermarket called “Mariano’s” located near my home in Downtown Chicago, I was utterly overwhelmed by the wide range of variety food choices that I had never seen in my home country.

As I walked around Chicago, I could easily imagine the reason why Mariano’s has such diverse product lines, and it’s due to the ethnic diversity of Downtown Chicago.

When you walk around the Downtown area, you realize there are a variety of people who have different and diverse ethnical backgrounds as these are: White people, African Americans, Asian people, Muslim people, and so many more ethnicities.

Compared to other areas in the City of Chicago, the variety of ethnicities in the Downtown area is wide, and there is a good mix of these different ethnicities and they all seem well integrated into the local community of the Downtown area.

When I initially arrived in Chicago, I wondered the variety of product lines in supermarkets has a relationship with the diversity of ethnicities in a certain area.

The answer is quite simple: what we eat is a critical element of our lifestyle, and especially the taste of homelands strongly relates to our cultural backbones, which can remind us of nostalgia for our homelands and, at the same time, enables us to feel that, our nostalgia is fulfilled while we stay outside of our homelands.

I realized this perspective through my first-hand experience as an international student living in the City of Chicago who craved my homeland’s dishes so many times.

Thus, in this podcast, I would like to contemplate the diverse ethnicity of Downtown Chicago, not from my observation of people on the streets, but from my observation of product lines at the Mariano’s supermarket in Downtown Chicago. Let’s take a closer look at the specific products I found in my favorite supermarket.

First, I want to start with the Mexican products I found in the supermarket. One of the famous Mexican dishes is obviously tacos, and of course, I love eating tacos with salsa sauce. And what astonished me most was that there were over 50 types of salsa sauce on the shelves!

Also, I could find over 20 types of tortillas, including soft shells’ and hard shells’!

Taking this wide range of tacos ingredients into account, we can enjoy a myriad combination of tacos at home, which are supposed to satisfy the desire for authentic tacos of Hispanics including Mexican and tacos lovers!

With regard to tacos, I want to add that Mariano’s has “tomatillo” as one of its product lines in the vegetable area, which is used for making salsa verde sauce, which we can rarely see in other supermarkets.

For my second point, I would like to refer to food choices related to religion, which is deeply related to ethnicities.

I found that there are some corners and products for Muslim people, which I can tell from Halal marks on the surfaces of the products.

In my understanding, Muslim people are prohibited from eating non-Halal foods; thus, if there are no Halal-marked foods available or Muslim people cannot tell if a product falls under Halal food or non-Halal food from its appearance or any other provided information, they cannot eat foods without worrying about conflicting halal attributes.

Additionally, the Mariano’s in Downtown Chicago has multiple shelves where only kosher foods are sold, which may be consumed according to Jewish religious law!

I believe this kind of consideration for Muslim and Jewish people is done in admiration for those cultures, and also evident that these people exist as residents of Downtown Chicago and integrated into its community.

And the next point, which is the most important and favorite part for me, are the Asian foods.

The broad range of Asian food items sold at Mariano’s literally blew me away!

Mariano’s does not only sell Chinese food items but also Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, and Middle Eastern food.

I saw that Mariano’s has not only a few kinds of products from each of these countries, but basically shelves and lines for food items from each country.

As a Japanese person, what made me joyful most is that there are major seasonings, including soy sauce, miso, teriyaki sauce, and surprisingly, there are over ten types of soy sauce on a shelf that enables me to cook authentic Japanese dishes by recreating the delicate flavors of my home countries’ dishes.

The fact that Mariano’s serves a wide range of products relieves me and surely helps me to integrate into Downtown and even gives me confidence that I can be a part of this city’s community.

In my experience, food items from different countries are surely sold in a certain place, though it is not easy to purchase them in one place because these kinds of products are sold in stores specializing in food items from specific countries.

Though Mariano’s does not specialize in any country or area, just working as a general supermarket for neighbors, it is amazing that it has a large selection of cultural food.

I believe this is completely because of the diverse ethnicities living in the Downtown area and I assume that the supermarket has gradually adopted itself to such diversity to function as a hub of foods for diverse ethnicities.

Thank you for listening to my podcast. If you go into a supermarket in Downtown Chicago next time, take a closer look at what kinds of products from all over the world are sold, and if you would like some, I encourage you to try them!