FOOD : Where East Meets West

I’M SO ADDICTED to Asia and Asian food that I succumb to mild depression on the return flight from a trip to the Orient. But I’ve found a way to alleviate the melancholy: I take a long walk through downtown L.A.’s Chinatown. The strong, sweet fragrances of the displays are the same scents that permeate Singapore’s Chinatown. It’s the next best thing to being in the East.

Ten Ren Tea Co. (811 N. Broadway), is a branch of a Taipei shop where I buy tea. And Bangkok seemed a little closer when I spotted frozen seafood shipped in by a company on Soi Langsuan, a street in Bangkok known for its great eating places. Besides atmosphere, in Chinatown I find practical buys not available in markets elsewhere, such as boneless cuts of pork particularly well-suited for the preparation of Chinese dishes. The 99 Ranch Market (in the Bamboo Plaza at the north end of Hill Street) sells meat cut in tiny cubes or strips for stir-frying, as well as paper-thin slices of lamb. The vegetables here are so clearly labeled that you’ll quickly learn the difference between gai lan (Chinese kale) and bok choy. Ai Hoa Market (860 N. Hill St.) stocks interesting produce, including the soapy-tasting laksa leaf, which is used in a Singaporean dish of noodles with a curry-coconut broth. The items are labeled in three languages--Vietnamese, Chinese and English. . And I often wind up at the area’s only Thai store, the Los Angeles Supermarket (675 N. Spring St.), which carries jasmine rice, curry pastes, lemon grass, among other essentials.

Chinatown is a Pan-Asian bazaar, presenting not just Chinese foods but Indonesian candlenuts, Korean kimchi, Filipino seasonings. Recently, I even saw fresh durian, the notoriously strong-smelling, spiny Asian fruit, which brought back memories of an afternoon in Malaysia, munching the fruit along the roadside. The flavor was magnificent, like mellow custard laced with fine brandy.