Global Market

Within the walls of this crowded, curry-scented market, a dozen languages bounce off each other on any given day, crisscrossing and colliding over the brimming bins of produce, grain and spice.

Patrons of Valley Produce and Deli may not always understand one another clearly, but they all speak the language of food and share a respect for keeping traditions.

Inside this local version of a Middle Eastern bazaar, where Arabic music plays softly in the background, it is not so unusual for a shopper, say from Israel or India or the Philippines, to request kosher or other specially prepared meats from the Latino butchers in la carniceria.

They can compare the difference between the slim, lavender Chinese eggplants and the round, deep-purple Italian ones, glance through the pastry shelves for baklava made in Greek bakeries, then pay the Assyrian cashiers at the front.

It is a small world after all.

“I can find many of the items from my homeland here for my family,” said Mahshid Foroutan. On this night, she will return to her kitchen in Encino to prepare torshe tareh, a relish common in Risht, Iran. For this, she uses fresh dill, parsley, mint leaves, garlic and eggs. She will serve it with the buttery-smelling basmati rice and lavash, a soft, sheetlike bread. Foroutan also prefers hard-to-find Persian pears for dessert because they are smaller and sweeter, she said.

“I come here because it’s closer to home, it’s cheaper, and there are always fresh items.”

Originally a 5,000-square-foot shop on Sherman Way, Valley Produce and Deli is now a 70,000-square-foot market on Vanowen Street with front and back parking. It moved to its current location in 1996, when City Councilwoman Laura Chick noticed that the smaller store was causing a neighborhood nuisance because of the crowds. It was Chick who suggested to owner Ephram Nehme to take over the larger building.

A former financial planner from Lebanon, Nehme, 49, opened the market in 1992 with his wife, Odetta, a former pharmacist. The couple had been observing their culturally rich neighborhood and decided to try opening a business.

In Reseda, where the latest census figures show about 90,000 residents, 27 ethnic groups speak 67 languages.

Even in such an area, said Nehme, a market that could tempt just the Middle Eastern palate seemed like a good risk.

And while small, international specialty markets seem to come and go, as transitory sometimes as the people who own them, Nehme’s shop has boomed.

“I don’t know what it is, but people really like to see a lot of produce in the bins,” explained the slender owner as he made his way through the aisles of crates overflowing with white cherries, lentils, bulgur, cumin and saffron.

With almost 100 distributors coming and going and restocking shelves through his market each day, Nehme admits he barely knows how many of the products, such as the spices from India, Mexico and Iran, are used.

“Look at this,” he said, holding a bag of a red, powdered condiment in amazement. “What do people do with this? I don’t know.”

A man from Afghanistan who learned that Nehme is the owner blocked him in the aisle to make a business proposition. He would like to open a kebab catering service in the small plaza at the front of the store. Nehme refused politely.

“Tomorrow I bring you kebab,” the man insisted, keen on the obvious success of the market and how well he could do here. “It is the best you will taste ever.”

“No, no, I don’t want to sell cooked food here,” Nehme replied apologetically, then shook the man’s hand.

For the Middle Eastern shopper, there is almost everything, brought in mainly through Israel and Iran. Bottles of rose syrup used in Persian dishes sit next to jars of pomegranate molasses made into a favorite Lebanese drink. Solid-packed 40-pound burlap bags of basmati rice rest atop one another in rows, like sandbag trenches. From the tiny, green beans that resemble peas and are called musy to the pints of plain yogurt, known as mast in Farsi, each food seems valuable because it is difficult to acquire or expensive in the large chain supermarkets, shoppers say.

One of the biggest attractions is the Persian cucumbers, which are piled high in a square, trough-like bin toward the back of the store.

“Back home, this is what we are used to,” said Jay Haddad, now a Woodland Hills resident. He stood among six other customers sifting and packing their plastic bags with the stout, green produce. At 49 cents a pound, shoppers know they can’t go wrong.

Originally from Jordan, Haddad said he comes to the market three times a week to buy cucumbers for his deli in Panorama City.

“The owner knows what Arab people want,” he said.

But not every customer is Middle Eastern. Cham Lavatin, a native of Vietnam who lives in Winnetka, is a regular “because the prices are low, the fruit is fresh and less expensive and I can save money for the family.”

And not every Middle Easterner is Arab or Persian. Calabasas resident Lilliana Eshoo explained that it is the Israeli products that keep her coming back.

“I love this market because they have items from Israel and Europe,” said Eshoo. Cans of sour pickles in brine, a pint of lebneh or sour yogurt, candies from Indonesia and a bag of marinated chicken for shish kebab were some of the items piled in her cart. The market reminds her of the Israeli street bazaars of her childhood.

“It’s like Israel,” she said enthusiastically. “It’s crazy and wild and it’s got lots of people.”

Lots of people from different lands who rub shoulders in his market, mused Nehme. And now Nehme--a Thousand Oaks resident who came to the States in 1969 and has two grown children--said he’s thinking of adding more shops to the small plaza in front of the store.

Already, the plaza holds a pharmacy, a flower shop, a watch and clock repair shop and Best Records, where CDs from such artists as the Moroccan Sheb Khalid and the Spain-based band Alabina are sold. And if he could, Nehme said, he would add a few more Asian and Latin products. But at the moment, he is content with what has evolved.

“I created a monster,” he said, surveying the hubbub. “I don’t know what is the secret.”