Ethnic Food Markets Enjoy a Minor Boom : Growth in County’s Immigrant Population Sparks a Rising Demand for Exotic Items

If it isn’t stocked at the local supermarket, don’t despair. Somewhere in Orange County, with its growing ethnic population, there’s a neighborhood grocery that carries the gustatory delights most people sample only on trips to exotic places.

Shoppers can, for example, buy kosher bubble gum and frozen kosher chicken chow mein at the Fairfax Kosher Meat Market in Los Alamitos; visit the Ibero-American Market in Anaheim for Brazilian soda pops, cassava root--a Central American potato substitute--and five-foot-long banana leaves used to wrap Guatemalan tamales, or stop by any number of Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, or Middle Eastern markets and delis to fill their larders with hommous (a paste of garbanzo beans, sesame seeds and spices), grape leaves, real curry spices, feta cheeses--even day-old sushi.

These specialty grocery stores--more than 70 of them offer a full range of food items--are enjoying a business boom as the demand for ethnic foodstuffs grows in the county. Although most such foods are imported, the increasing demand, along with the rapid rise in the size of the county’s ethnic population, makes likely an accompanying boom in the number of Orange County-based food companies that specialize in producing processed ethnic foods.

Competition Light

Specialty grocers say they generally don’t feel competitive pressures from more “mainstream” supermarkets because those markets don’t stock many ethnic foods. And while ethnic grocers generally do stock domestic soft drinks and beers, they don’t offer much more to a meat-and-potatoes shopper who might happen to wander in.

“We don’t give the big guys much competition,” said Cesar Gonzalez, co-owner of the Ibero-American Market. In fact, he said, the supermarket three blocks away helps his business. “It brings people to the neighborhood--people who might not have heard of us.”

At Fairfax Kosher Meat Market--one of the few kosher groceries to cater to the growing number of Orthodox and tradition-minded Jews in Orange County--manager Elias Naghi said business has been growing slowly for his shop, where a rabbi runs the meat counter with two meat cutters and 50% of the items are imported from Israel.

Because it is one of the few certified kosher grocers south of the Fairfax district in Los Angeles, Naghi said the market gets customers from as far away as San Diego and Las Vegas who want items such as the kosher chicken chow mein he stocks in the frozen foods section.

Fertile Marketplace

And the growing number of Middle Eastern and Mediterranean natives who have settled in Orange County are providing a fertile marketplace for nearly two dozen groceries.

Italian specialty markets lead the pack--there are more than a dozen of them--but the county also counts a number of Lebanese, Armenian and other Middle Eastern specialty food stores.

One of the oldest, Akoubian’s Delicatessen and Grocery in Fountain Valley, has stocked Armenian, Arab, Iranian and Greek items for 14 years. Owner Raffi Akoubian said the influx of immigrants has made the market for their native foods large enough for some companies to begin domestic production of some breads and pastries, though feta cheeses made from sheep’s milk are still imported.

Akoubian said he imports items from the Middle East virtually without problems, despite ongoing strife in exporting nations like Lebanon. “They’ll export products as usual,” he said. “It’s like war on one side, business on the other side.” Occasionally, however, political problems overseas do result in delayed shipments, he said.

Use L.A. Distributors

Importing generally isn’t a problem for local ethnic grocers. Most simply visit distributors in Los Angeles to pick up their items--whether they be from Israel or Central America or France.

The county’s Central American population is growing as emigrants from El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala and Costa Rica find their way into the Anaheim, Santa Ana and Fullerton areas.

And Gonzalez, owner of the Ibero-American Market--the oldest grocery store in the county to cater to that group--couldn’t be happier.

He said while most other Latino-oriented markets stock only standard Mexican fare, he sells imported produce from Spain, the Caribbean and Central America, including five-foot-long Guatemalan banana leaves for wrapping tamales.

“You want to come in and see something weird, come on down here,” he said, adding that weird , of course, is simply a matter of taste and familiarity.

Mexican Customers

Most of Gonzalez’s customers are Mexican, though more and more Central Americans come in for the banana leaves, cassava root and other items not generally used in Mexican cooking.

The Ibero-American Market gets all kinds of customers: South American shoppers might come in for the Brazilian soda pop that Gonzalez stocks, while African customers come to the market for the tropical plantains, or cooking bananas.

Of all the ethnic groups in Orange County, the Asian community seems to be growing most rapidly--judging by the increasing number of Vietnamese supermarkets and Japanese and Korean grocery stores that line such streets as Bolsa Avenue in Westminster and West Ball Road in Anaheim. Nippon Foods in Anaheim sells day-old sushi and 10 different brands and varieties of tofu. It has been offering Japanese groceries to the Asian community for more than 20 years and is one of the older ethnic specialty food stores in Orange County.

10 Stores in Area

The small Japanese grocery store on West Ball Road is one of at least 10 Asian grocers in the neighborhood, owner James Michiuye said.

The county’s Japanese-American population has been growing slowly, said Michiuye, who bought the store seven months ago after working for years as a fish peddler in Torrance. He said the South Bay area of Los Angeles County is so crowded with Japanese businesses that incoming Asian businesses won’t have anyplace else to go in Southern California except Orange County.

And Indians and Pakistanis who have immigrated to Orange County, lured by the area’s large number of technical jobs, are slowly growing in numbers.

Vansha Gandhi, whose husband--a former machinist--owns the 5-year-old Asian Grocery Imports store in Tustin, now counts about 1,000 families on the store’s mailing list. The store is one of only a few in the county specializing in imported Indian and Pakistani foods.

Gandhi said about 30% of the store’s customers are neither Indian nor Pakistani but are fans of Indian food. Some are natives of Great Britain who lived in India during the British occupation of that country.