Culinary Crossroads

Within the crowded walls of this curry-scented market in Reseda, 12 different languages bounce off each other on any given day, crisscrossing and colliding over the brimming bins of produce, grains and spice.

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

Inside this 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, florescent 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 for their purchases.

“I can find many of the items from my homeland here for my family,” says 25-year-old 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 a few eggs. She will serve it with the buttery-smelling basmati rice and lavash, a soft, thin, sheet-like bread. Foroutan prefers the Persian pears for dessert, which are smaller and sweeter, she says, and hard to find.

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

Once a 5,000-square-foot shop on Sherman Way, Valley Produce and Deli is now a 70,000-square-foot market on Vanowen Street. It moved to its current location last year 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 that he take over the larger building.

A former financial planner from Lebanon, Nehme opened the market in 1992 with his wife, Odetta, a former pharmacist. The couple had been watching their culturally rich neighborhood and decided to try opening their own business. In Reseda, where the latest census figures reveal about 90,000 residents, there are 27 ethnic groups speaking 67 languages.

In such an area, says Nehme, a market that could tempt even the Middle Eastern palate seemed like a positive risk.

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

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

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

*

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

“Tomorrow I bring you kabob,” the man insists. “It is the best you will taste ever.”

“No, no, I don’t want to sell cooked food here,” replies Nehme apologetically, and shakes the man’s hand.

For the Middle Eastern shopper, there is almost everything, brought in mostly from Israel and Iran. Bottles of rose syrup used in Persian dishes sit next to jars of pomegranate molasses made into a favorite Lebanese drink. Forty-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 and found in a square, trough-like bin toward the back of the store.

“Back home, this is what we are used to,” says Jay Haddad of Woodland Hills. He stands among six other customers sifting and packing plastic bags with the stout green vegetables.

*

Originally from Jordan, Haddad says 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 says.

Not every customer is Middle Eastern. Cham Lavatin, a native of Vietnam who lives in Winnetka, said she’s 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. Calabasas resident Lilliana Eshoo says that it is the Israeli products on the shelves that keep her coming back.

“I love this market because they have items from Israel and Europe,” says 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 kabob make up just part of the items piled in her cart. She said she is reminded of the Israeli street bazaars of her childhood.

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

Lots of people from different lands rub shoulders in his market, says Nehme, a Thousand Oaks resident with two grown children of his own who came to the United States in 1969.

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