Where to buy tortillas in Hamburg

I don't have much hope on this front but can you buy tortillas at a grocery store anywhere in the city?

Rewe should have them. I don't live in Hamburg but I assume you also have the Rewe grocery stores, right? They usually have a section with Asian and Mexican food where you would find tortillas. Not as good as in the US though and a lot more expensive. They're smaller too from what I remember. And flour, not corn tortillas.

I've seen them in quite a few places, last month I bought some in a Famila supermarket.

I've seen them in Karstadt as well.

i saw some at the Schlemmer Markt in Eppendorf a while ago. They had a small Mexican section. I'll be near Karstadt today and will see if they have them there.

You can now get a decent quesadilla at Qrito in Eimsbüttel, U2 to Osterstrasse.

Are you talking abou the soft tortillas that you use for quesadillas and fajitas?
You can get them in almost any supermarket, maybe not in the very small ones, but the decent sized have them. We're not totally living under rocks here

Some reckon we still run around in bearskins & chew on mammoth bones

Friday, I bought tortillas in the Karstadt in Wandsbek Quarree where I also picked up some salsa and jalapeños in a jar. Karstadt only carries flour tortillas. Corn tortillas are a bit more difficult to find in Hamburg. (My girlfriend brings back a suitcase full of corn tortillas each time she visits her family in Southern California.)

According to Qype, there's a grocery store called El Torre at Lagerstraße 36 in the Sternchanze part of town. They might have corn tortillas.

I have been totally unsuccessful in finding Monterey Jack cheese in Hamburg. Turns out it's an American-invented cheese. In some Mexican recipes, I've substituted Jack with Butterkäse, though I read on another forum young Gouda from Holland tastes nice as a replacement in quesadillas.

lol, right. When my bf's Dad visited us end last year he was going on "Do you have... - do you have..." "Back home we have..." - I found it quite cute and funny, but the fact that we bring bacon, bisto, pies etc. back here when we are in England must have given him the idea that we only have Sauerkraut und Schweinehaxe here
edit: there's soooo many different kinds of cheese available here, there must be something similar to the cheese you mention?!?

You can get them online here: La Tortilla
Not used it myself, but it seems to have a selection of Mexican foodstuff.

Never? Monterey is in California. See Wikipedia entry.

OK - so Cheddar is in England but "Cheddar cheese" comes from all over the place...

Yeah I wasn't holding my breath on that..

I found some Cathedral City Cheddar in Karstadt on Friday and thought, at last I don't need to wait every 2-3 months to bring back a decent cheddar from the UK. It's got on the packet England's No.1 Cheddar, matured 18 months, but it's not the real deal. The fat content is only 34%, I'm sure full fat extra mature Cheddar is in the region of 44-48% fat? Whilst the cheese itself is not bad, I remember Cathedral City being a strong intense cheddar. My German girlfriend, who loves Cheddar cheese, tasted this stuff and noticed straight away.

The packet should state reduced fat cheese.

[edited] To say I've just read that food manufacturers in the UK are gradually reducing fat content of products to combat obesity, could this 34% fat be the standard stuff now from what I once knew?

I've been on the Cathedral City website and the extra mature cheese is indeed 34.9%, so I'm wrong with the 44% fat.

So in short, Cathedral City cheddar is shit and I'll just have carrying on waiting every 2-3 months to get some decent stuff.

What about Cumin - whats the german word for that?

Kreuzkümmel

Cooking for a ladyfriend by any chance?

the tortillas at Karstadt cost about €3.50 for 8 9-inch tortillas. the also have smaller ones, and larger wraps.
a box of mac and cheese will set you back about 2 fiddy!

i should seriously get into the import food business...

You go back that often? Last year I only got back twice (each time for a funeral...)
Got one trip coming up early May - already got looooooooooonnnng shopping list. Not that we starve here of course.

It's just a hop across for me, it's not so easy for you I guess.

I also don't pay for all of the flights. The company I work for has it's main office in the UK. The deal is that I work in head office for 3 days every quarter and then I take a long weekend and go and visit family and friends. The other 2 times I pay for the flights myself and they are €150 tops for a return budget flight.

I have bought flour tortillas several times at the Edeka on Osterstrasse and Heussweg. They are in the International foods section close to the deli. The packages marked "Tortillas" are really expensive but I got some called "wraps" that tasted just fine and were half the price.

Not sure about corn tortillas. My Mexican-American friend makes them herself and has visitors bring them for her when they visit.

Tengelmann carry a large range of mexican food. I buy tacos, tortillas, corn chips etc there. I find some tengelmann stores have more than others so look around.

afaik we don't have Tengelmann's in Hamburg...

What about Plus, the one here has a fairly decent international section. (and if we out in Ossiland have it Hamburg should definitely have it) I found different size toritillas and did flips when I finally found jalapnenos here. That was a good day! Otherwise I get 'wraps' from Rewe also.

No tengelmann in hamburg???

How strange, I thought it was a Germany wide chain.

I just checked the Yellow Pages (www.gelbeseiten.de), Google Maps and Qype (www.qype.co.uk/de). Hammonia is right: There ain't no Tengelmann round these parts.

Thats not the END of the world - most of us manage not to starve...

Please, all the Turkish shops have flour tortillas in two different sizes. €1.50 for 10. They don't call them tortillas of course...

As a self-proclaimed Mexican food addict and tortilla snob, I really recommend you just make them yourself. I've tried both varieties - corn & flour. While they certainly aren't as beautiful as their store-bought counterparts, they are lekker and without all the really funky preservatives I see in the packaged tortillas. You can buy a tortilla press or just smash the dough between wax paper with a big pan (my route).

Failing that, I've seen some decent looking flour tortillas at a few of the Turkish stores (in particular the one on Methfesselstrasse & Stellinger Weg in Eimsbuttel).

Also, if you are jonesing for a decent salsa, here is a super easy and yum recipe:

can of whole/diced/whatever tomatoes with juice
juice of one half lime
small onion, diced
1 clove garlic, diced
1 hot pepper of your choice, finely diced
1 bunch cilantro (koriander, auf Deutsch), diced

Put everything but the koriander in a blender and blend (or whiz with a hand blender). Once you've achieved a nice consistency, add the cilantro and mix. Salt to taste.

This is best if you give it a day in the fridge. It blows the crappy jarred stuff out of the water.

yeah i can do salsa and guac and all that stuff, I just suck at making tortillas and I am supremely lazy.

Turkish markets (and Asian markets) sell lots of familiar foods for much much less than the Germans markets.

I've not yet seen corn tortillas. :-(

Me neither.

However, a friend of mine says you can find bleached corn flour in most of the African shops. I found fine yellow corn flour at Khan Plaza. You'll have to make them yourself. Recipe with photos here: http://www.elise.com/recipes/archives/0041...n_tortillas.php