Best of 2001: Best Sugar

Tres Caños Azucar Moreno
Food Bowl Supermarket (and others)
619-239-4709

The proverbial problem with white sugar is that it's so ultra-refined, it tastes more like a chemical product than a plant derivative. (Worse yet, the many brands made from beets rather than cane produce odd, disappointing results in baked goods.) Light-brown turbinado sugar tastes more realistic, but it's typically sold coarse-ground, so that it's hard to measure and hard to melt. Tres Caños Azucar Moreno, a premium brand from Mexico, solves both problems. It's a fine-ground turbinado-style sugar with a mild but distinctive flavor (not just sweetness, but a hint of tropical fruit), and it tastes like a food that once grew in the ground. It measures out the same as granulated white sugar but tastes noticeably better, especially in coffee, tea, and simple fruit desserts. It's packaged in bags decorated with a sketch of a Juan Valdez look-alike, costs slightly more than white sugar and much less than turbinado, and can be found next to the plebeian gringo sweet-stuff on the shelves of many Latin supermarkets, including South Park's Food Bowl.