Imported coffee at The PR Pantry, a Puerto Rican store, on Tuesday, Sept. 10, 2024, at 1204 Greensboro Road in High Point, N.C.
Michael Hastings
A local family is now offering a wide variety of Puerto Rican foods in High Point.
Angelie Guzman and husband Brice Myers have wanted to operate a food truck or trailer for a while. But they ended up opening a convenience store first.
PR Pantry opened in June at 120 Greensboro Road in High Point. It offers the usual items found in most convenience stores plus a selection of Puerto Rican foods and drinks.
But this month, the owners opened the PR Pantry food truck (actually a trailer) - which they are parking right outside the convenience store.
The driving force behind the food truck is actually Guzman's mother, Dianette Gonzalez. "My mom's the chef," Guzman said. "I'm kind of like her sous chef. I take orders, do the line prep."
Guzman said people have praised her mother's cooking for years. "My grandfather before he passed away had a dream for her to own her own restaurant."
Gonzalez is a native of Puerto Rico. Guzman was born after her family moved to New York. They followed a couple of Guzman's uncles to North Carolina about seven years ago.
Myers helps out with the store as much he can, but is home most days with the couple's three-year-old son. Guzman's brother Jordan also helps out in the store, and Gonzalez's boyfriend Jose Sanabria helps on the truck.
The family thought about a food truck a while back, but it wasn't happening at first, so they decided to open a store. "We started convenience store first just because we couldn't find truck within our budget," Guzman said.
But not long after opening the store, they did manage to find a used trailer they liked.
The family is using a commercially inspected commissary in Archdale for much of their advance prep, including making such slow-cooked dishes as chicken stew and pernil (roast pork).
The store and trailer are open six days a week.
Inside the store, customers can get some of the family's homemade tres leches cake, flan, guava and cream-cheese pastries and limbers (Icee-like frozen cups) in such flavors as coconut and pineapple.
The also have popular Puerto Rican sodas such as Old Colony pineapple and grape soda and Malta India malted beverages.
The Puerto Rican section of the store also has such items and Bimbo snack cakes, Yaucono coffee and Coco Pina pineapple coconut candy.
The trailer outside offers a fairly extensive menu of traditional foods. "French fries are about the only thing we have that's American," Guzman said.
The eight combo plates ($12.99 to $15.29), which come with rice and one other side, include pernil, fried pork chunks, chicken stew, mofongo (mashed plantais) and pastelon (Puerto Rican meat lasagna with plantains subbing for pasta).
There are such appetizers as alcapurria, a kind of Puerto Rican take on tamales, filled with ground beef and coated in a mixture of ground taro root and green banana. Other appetizers include pinchos (skewers of seasoned pork or chicken) and bacalaitos (salt-cod fritters).
Sides include rice and peas, tostones or maduros (fried green or sweet plantains) and habichuelas guisas (beans).
There are a few Latin restaurants around the Triad that offer a few Puerto Rican dishes. But after the close of Agueybana El Bravo food truck last fall, PR Pantry is the only dedicated Puerto Rican food business in the area.
"There aren't really stores where you can get Puerto Rican food in this area," Guzman said. "A lot of these traditional foods on the menu, you can't get anywhere else.
"We just wanted to bring a little of Puerto Rican food and culture to our area."
336-727-7394
@mhastingswsj
PR Pantry
Address: 1304 Greensboro Road, High Point, N.C. 27260
Phone: (336) 781-0693
Hours: store: 11 a.m. 9 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday; trailer: 12 to 8 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday
Facebook: The PR Pantry
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