Souvenir Hunting at a Santo Domingo Supermarket
Coffee and Rum at Nacional

I love stopping by supermarkets when I travel. More than any souvenir shop, the shelves show you exactly how a country lives. Between things in Santo Domingo, I wandered into Supermercado Nacional inside the Plaza Central shopping mall — one of the Dominican Republic's leading supermarket chains, spacious, with a selection on the upscale side. To give away the ending: almost all my souvenirs came from here.

Mountains of Batata and Plantains

The produce section stopped me first. Batata — sweet potatoes — piled high in yellow, red and white varieties, each with its price chalked on a handwritten board. Next to them, mountains of green bananas: plantains, the backbone of the Dominican table. Boiled and mashed, they become mangú, the national breakfast. Yuca and ñame line up too. One look at these shelves tells you that roots and plantains form the carbohydrate skeleton of this country.

The pepper shelves — all grouped as ají in Spanish — were a flood of color I couldn't resist photographing. Dominican food is not particularly spicy; most of these end up as aromatics in stews.

The Presidente Aisle

The drinks section is one long aisle: beer running down the left, wine down the right. The star of the beer shelf is Presidente in its green bottle — the national beer, which I saw absolutely everywhere, from corner colmados to restaurants. There's the black-label Presidente Black, and Mexico's Modelo alongside. The wine side hangs signs by origin — Spain, France, South America — with very local-feeling "3x2" promotions everywhere.

What I Bought: Coffee, Rum and Sweets

I picked three souvenirs. First, Café Santo Domingo — the coffee named after the capital and probably the country's best-loved everyday brand. The Dominican Republic grows coffee in its mountains, and a supermarket vacuum pack of ground coffee is light, cheap and easy to carry. Second, an armful of sweets to hand out. And third: rum.

My choice was Brugal Doble Reserva. Founded in 1888 and based in Puerto Plata, Brugal is one of the Dominican Republic's defining rum houses, counted with Barceló and Bermúdez among the country's "big three." Doble Reserva blends rums aged in whiskey casks and sherry casks, and the white netting around the bottle is Brugal's traditional dress. It also continues a Caribbean thread from Nicaragua's Flor de Caña. I'm saving the first pour for home — and it deserves its own article someday.

Walking out with a bag in each hand, what I carried wasn't stones or crafts but this country's everyday life. A different kind of souvenir shop from the jeweler on Calle Las Damas (last time). If you can only stop at one place on a trip, my vote goes to the supermarket, every time.

If you want to know a country's kitchen, walk its supermarket shelves before its museums.