Along a 1-mile stretch of Green Springs Highway in Homewood nearly two dozen restaurants, markets and food trucks serve food from practically every continent on the planet.
You’ll find specialties from Mexico, Korea, El Salvador, China, Ethiopia, India, Middle Eastern countries and even a bit of Cajun French cooking on the side.
Here is a guide to Homewood, Alabama’s, international mile. (When applicable, shopping center names are included in the location information.)
No passport is necessary – just a hunger to explore.
Central and South America
Marielo’s Pupuseria: Food truck specializing in pupusas, snacks popular in El Salvador and Honduras. They are hand-made to order from cornmeal masa dough, with choice of filling. 820 Green Springs Highway (Sunoco station).
Sabor Latino: Peruvian dishes like Lomo Saltado beef, Jalea fried seafood and Leche de Tigre ceviche share the restaurant menu with Tex-Mex faves. 112 Green Springs Highway (Gilcrest Shopping Center).
Asia
Mr. Chen Chinese Restaurant: One of the area’s top Chinese restaurants serving regional specialties, Mr. Chen is inside the Hometown Supermarket (see below). The restaurant reinforces the notion that the best Chinese and other international restaurants often are attached to markets with fresh produce, seafood and butchers. 808 Green Springs Highway.
Chop Suey Inn: The eatery serves standard Cantonese-style Chinese food. The egg rolls are made using the recipe from Birmingham’s fabled Joy Young restaurant, which was open from the 1920s to the 1980s. 813 Green Springs Highway.
Seoul Restaurant: The gourmet menu combines well-known dishes like Bul Go Gi with less-familiar Korean soups, stews, seafood and tofu dishes. Meals are served with banchan, small servings of pickled and seasoned morsels, mainly vegetables. 430 Green Springs Highway (Green Springs Center).
Mexico
Mexi King’s Grill: The Tex-Mex eatery, opened this year by Felix Cruz and Germain Urbano, mixes Mexican and American cuisines. 801 Green Springs Highway.
Acapulco Bar and Grill: This restaurant serves both Tex-Mex favorites and Mexican street snacks like saucer-shaped sopes and circular stuffed gorditas. 430 Green Springs Highway (Green Springs Center).
La Perla Nayarita: Inspired by cuisine popular on the Nayarit coast in western Mexico, the restaurant is a temple to seafood, including whole fish, shrimp, oysters and octopus. Pinas, seafood-stuffed baked pineapple halves, are specialties. The kitchen at this spacious eatery also produces standard Mexican fare. 150 Green Springs Highway (Gilcrest Shopping Center).
Taqueria La Parrandero: The taco truck with tented seating is a late-night stop for street tacos, torta sandwiches and other Mexican munchies. 265 Green Springs Highway (Chevron station).
Tacos Don Tacho #2: Mexican savory dishes and sweets include birria, tacos filled with long-simmered meats and served with the cooking broth. 437 Green Springs Highway (Edgemont Town Center).
Tortas Locas: Tortas, Mexico’s version of a sub sandwich, are just the beginning at this small restaurant. You’ll also find sopes – saucer-shaped griddled corn dough cradling meat and cheese, along with birria and even whole fried fish. 44 Green Springs Highway (Green Springs Plaza).
La Nueva Michoacana: The ice cream, served in scoops and used in myriad colorful desserts, is made in-house. Another specialty is paletas, frozen pops made from fresh fruit or cream based. 110 Green Springs Highway (Gilcrest Shopping Center).
Arabian Sea
Red Sea: The original owners combined Middle Eastern food with dishes from their native Ethiopia. The current owners added Cajun dishes. The Ethiopian food, mostly stewed meats and vegetables, is served with injera, pliant sourdough rounds that are torn and used to scoop the food. 22 Green Springs Highway (Green Springs Plaza).
Biryani Bowl: This Indian restaurant features chicken and vegetarian curries, samosas and other appetizers, and the namesake baked rice dish. 22 Green Springs Highway (Green Springs Plaza).
Purple Onion: Gyro restaurants shaving rotisserie meat to nestle in warm pita bread began popping up around Birmingham in the 1980s. Purple Onion, which has several locations around Birmingham, has been serving Mediterranean food since 1991. 479 Green Springs Highway.
International markets
Hometown Supermarket: Although it specializes in Asian produce, fruit, seasonings and frozen prepared foods, Hometown Supermarket also stocks products to cook dishes from several African, Latin American and Caribbean countries. It also carries pork, chicken and other meat processed in-house and has a full-service seafood counter. 808 Green Springs Highway.
Mediterranean Food Market: The metro area’s oldest halal butcher carries chicken, lamb and goat – fresh and frozen. Its produce, grains, spices and other preparations lend themselves to cooking food from throughout the Middle East. 430 Green Springs Highway (Green Springs Center).
Mi Pueblo Supermarket: The only place you’ll find a better selection of meats, chiles, produce, tortillas and other ingredients for cooking Mexican and other Latin American food is the Mi Pueblo in Pelham. The Homewood market also contains a bakery, restaurant and fresh juice stand. 216 Green Springs Highway.
Halal Supermarket: Sharing space with Red Sea and Biryani Bowl restaurants, the market stocks halal meats, cheeses, yogurts and other ingredients for cooking food from multiple Arab countries. It also sells frozen foods and fresh vegetables – some familiar and some unusual. 22 Green Springs Highway (Green Springs Plaza).
La Hacienda Michoacana Supermarket: This Mexican market includes a tortilleria and taqueria. 118 Green Springs Highway (Gilcrest Shopping Center).
This story originally was published on the SoulGrown website.