Nearby, the world’s fare awaits

Tired of shopping the globe online, but too broke/busy to get on a plane? Well, where do you want to go? Russia? Take the Western Avenue exit off the 101. How about Vietnam? That would be Brookhurst Street off the 405. You get the picture.

We all know Los Angeles is a jigsaw of cultures and correspondent markets, with a dozen countries’ wares and comestibles within motoring distance. Still, we rarely make the trip.

Whether driven by curiosity, the desire to save money, or the realization that, like Stepford wives, we’ve been trawling the same neighborhoods for the same products weekend after weekend, we will be amply rewarded if we just get in the car and go.

And yet, such rationales do not take into account the anxiety factor: That we don’t speak Russian / Farsi / Taiwanese / Spanish. That we will not recognize the products at ethnic markets or know how to wear them or what to cook with them.

These anxieties are not really about the goods, but about walking into a proverbial party where we don’t know anyone. Going to, say, Little India in Artesia (provided we don’t live there) means we enter a community unlike our own, where women’s silk saris skim the sidewalk, Hindi popular music pours from stores and the toasted aroma of cumin and cashews wafts from the chat (snack) shops. Different? Yes. Scary? No.

Slipping into L.A.’s swirl of humanity is both part of the city’s charm and its very fabric. And the going’s easy. Just about anyone can get to Monterey Park, and then nod at the Cantonese-speaking counterman that, yes, we’d like a pound of the live shrimp, please. The 21st century, as it happens, is not so different from those earlier, darker ages -- to find the measure of a culture, start at the central marketplace.

Monterey Park, Westminster

Monterey Park’s population is predominantly Chinese, and the area’s many dim sum parlors, noodle houses and Cantonese fish restaurants are said to be the best outside of Hong Kong. The corner of Garvey and Garfield avenues constitutes a sort of epicenter, and is a block from Hong Kong Market, a busy, brightly lit supermarket in a complex that also houses a herbal medicine dispensary, an electronics store and a juice bar serving peanut milk and plum snow bubble.

Hong Kong Market’s most invigorating products, though, are found swimming and crawling beneath the Marine Product Fish Dept. sign: tanks of live “Boston” lobsters and fat-toothed groupers, buckets of soft-shell turtles and blue crabs. There’s also every imaginable variety of fish and poultry (none of it plastic-wrapped, all of it plump and looking good), oodles of noodles (rice, flour, yam, buckwheat; fresh, dried, fried, puffed) and what must be a thousand takes on curry and condiments.

Nearby 99 Ranch Market is a chain of huge markets that skew Taiwanese -- head-on poultry, live seafood, unusual vegetables, kitchen equipment -- but that also stocks American staples like Bud tallboys and Comet.

You know you’ve entered the Little Saigon section of Westminster when the street signs change their lettering, from block to vaguely Hofbrau. Bolsa Avenue isn’t much in the way of pulchritude; it’s a wide, sun-drenched street lined with strip malls; you can drive for a mile and not see a sign in English.

But a good place to pull into is Today Plaza, 60 or so dentists’ offices and video stores and hair salons and, at the far end, the gigantic T&K; Food Market, a supermarket-cum-warehouse store that sells fresh produce and live fish (including barracuda and the aptly named belt fish, 4 feet long and 3 inches wide), as well as items in bulk, such as sacks of chile flakes as big as bed pillows.

Those looking for smaller exotica can grab a jar of aloe vera in honey, rice cracker mini-packs ideal for tossing in kids’ lunch boxes, or individual drip pots for Vietnamese coffee. Also in Today Plaza is Thong Loi, an odds-and-ends shop filled with everything from inexpensive and colorful paper goods to fanciful pinwheels. Outside the dessert shop Hien Khanh one day last week, a group of young Vietnamese girls slurped che, sweet milky drinks in which spun bits of what looked like black licorice. Inside the shop were trays of gelatinous, soupy desserts that one observer thought looked like “Star Trek food,” the grass-green squiggles in particular. What flavor was it? The counterman looked closely. “I don’t know!” he said, and laughed. Delicious was the che choi, warm coconut cream tapioca, studded with long slices of chewy dried banana.

Artesia

Little India in Artesia is one of the city’s easiest shopping neighborhoods to explore, the clothing shops and restaurants and jewelers conveniently lining both sides of a tidy three-block stretch of Pioneer Boulevard. There’s a leisurely pace to the street, peopled mostly by Sikh men in turbans and women wearing salwar kameez, the traditional north Indian suit of pants, long tunic and scarf (and which are displayed in a quarter of the shop windows).

Patel Brothers is a family grocery that stocks Indian and Pakistani foods, including sacks of many types of dal, jars of ghee and date syrup, mango relish and lime pickle. Several doors down is Bombay Spices, which carries bag upon bag of curry leaves and turmeric, sweet fennel and coriander and mustard seeds, and mortars and pestles with which to grind them. Be aware: These fresh spices will pack many times the punch of that 6-year-old can of curry you have. Also to pick up at Bombay Spices: a packet of henna powder for mendhi at home, and, on the counter, a Day-Glo revolving effigy of Krishna.

All along the street are shops, like Anuradha Silk & Sarees, filled with roll after roll of richly colored silks for custom-made saris. Between the price, the selection and a seemingly endless list of ideas on what can be made from the cloth, it’s difficult to leave empty-handed.

Irresistible chat and methai (snacks and sweets) are at Surati Farsan Mart, a chic snack shop (“farsan” means “snacks” in Gujarati) with glittering glass cases displaying dozens of salty/savory and sweet morsels, including the crunchy magaj, a fried chickpea cake flavored with vanilla and cardamom. Next door, sounds from Ziba Music fill the shop and spill out onto the street. Inside you’ll find an eclectic range of Indian music including the latest from India as well as popular Bollywood film soundtracks.

Fairfax District

For decades, the Fairfax District -- Fairfax Avenue roughly between Melrose Avenue and Beverly Boulevard -- was like a modern-day Orchard Street, chockablock with Eastern European Jewish shops and foods, and a street scene teeming with old people pushing shopping carts and kibitzing. It still is, but look closer and you’ll see as many windows lettered in Arabic as Cyrillic and Hebrew; even the glatt kosher restaurants these days serve shawarma. There is an added Russian flavor to the scene now -- from the people to the products. (There are smaller, but more concentrated versions of this scene being played out nearby along Pico and Santa Monica boulevards.)

The window at El-Ad Nuts has trays of freshly roasted cashews as big as thumbs, and a crag of halvah. Inside are many Middle Eastern specialties, including a syrupy pomegranate juice concentrate, for which El-Ad’s proprietress suggested a walnut-and-chicken recipe, before wishing a customer, “Shabat shalom.” Musicall is a bright music store specializing in CDs and videos from Israel, as well as Hebrew-English learning tapes. Fish Gal is a barebones kosher fishmonger, with whole salmon, bass and halibut on ice, and a counterman who greets customers with a hearty, “Ola!”

Solomon’s is packed with books, bar and bat mitzvah supplies, torahs and talaisim, and board games for kids such as Passover Chutes and Ladders.

The busiest place on Fridays is Schwartz Bakery, which is crowded with those buying challah, marble cake, rugelach and other treats for Sabbath dinner. This is a place where people take their baked goods seriously: One customer was literally crying when she thought the bakery had run out of what she wanted, and would not be comforted until two women wearing babushkas hand-led her into the back and showed her the cakes.

Hollywood, Koreatown, Thai Town

Jon’s looks like every supermarket in America, until you notice Russian shampoo, Hungarian pickled peppers, Bulgarian cherry juice and baby food from Slovakia in the same aisle. But this chain of markets is more ecumenical still, with a vast variety of Latin American and Middle Eastern products.

Jon’s standout feature, however, is its deli case, with more than 40 types of ham and salami, herring done five ways and innumerable cheeses, fresh and aged, including an unusual solid ricotta from Greece. There are also olives and stuffed grape leaves and staunch breads, the stuff of a great picnic. Fresh cheeses can be found down the street from the Jon’s location in Hollywood, at Karoun Dairy, a small shop that sells European, Mexican and Middle Eastern dairy products, including store-brand labneh, Armenian feta and panella, a mild Mexican-style cheese that holds its shape when fried.

At Bangkok Market, the narrow aisles (and the parking lot) are always packed with restaurateurs from the gazillion Thai restaurants in nearby Thai Town and others wanting authentic, fresh Thai ingredients, including hundreds of pre-made curries, dozens of kinds of fish balls, head-on shrimp, golf ball-sized Thai eggplants, as well as a large assortment of steamers, woks and other kitchen accouterments. One of the few non-Mexican markets on this stretch of Melrose, Bangkok Market also carries a selection of Latin-American foods.

Walk past the old Korean woman squatting in the shade of a vending machine outside H.K. Korean Supermarket and into a huge market supplying all things to its mostly Korean clientele. There’s a cosmetic counter and a drug store, a liquor section stocking spirits such as Green Soju (made from sweet potato), lots of fresh produce and a freezer section with ice pops in flavors like caramel-chestnut and red bean. But the best thing about H.K. is its buffet of prepared foods, noodles sluiced in hot chile oil, sweet black beans, sweet-spicy eel, seaweed/sesame and lotus root salads. There’s also an entire cold case of kimchis, and a stunning selection of live fish, including abalone suctioned to the side of a big tank. Video screens at the checkout play the theme to “Star Wars” as the names of recent local Korean high school graduates scroll past, listing the Ivy League colleges where they’re headed.

Little Tokyo, Chinatown

Business is always brisk at United Foods, for staples and gifts and, perhaps, the off-brand kitty pajamas hanging out front that read only, “Hello!” Little Tokyo Square (formerly Yaohan Plaza) is a three-story mall on the edge of Little Tokyo. Walk in, and the first thing you see is Asahiya Bookstore, full of Japanese youths in their 20s, the guys poring over thousands of Japanese comics, the girls thumbing through Asian fashion magazines with names like With and Ray.

Continue on, past the beautiful Japanese tableware at Utsuwa-No-Yakata, and out the side door, which leads to the area’s largest and best-stocked Japanese market, Mitsuwa Marketplace. You can get Swiss Miss and Smucker’s here, but you will also find 60 types of tea, fresh salmon roe, bento boxes, Japanese beauty products such as Naive hair conditioner, noodles and rice and fermented black beans, plus sashimi fish displayed as attentively as if they were gemstones: opalescent slices of mackerel on a fern; slender pinkie-size shrimp lined up like tiny soldiers.

A FedEx truck is double-parked, a group of nuns walks slowly past a stall selling brassieres, three uniformed schoolboys swap Pokemon cards, and, outside Peking Poultry, a mother yells in Cantonese at her sulking teenage daughter. Welcome to Chinatown, where the streets are almost always packed and loud. Duck into Peking Poultry, and get a gander -- or a goose. The small, busy shop stocks both, as well as squab, partridge, quail and their eggs -- the size of hazelnuts and beautifully speckled. More great poultry is at the no-decor Superior Poultry, which is essentially two windows in a wall, behind which you can see box upon box of plump hens, ash-black silky chicks, water ducks, chukars and old chickens. You can also buy live poultry, upon request.

Far East Supermarket (formerly Man Wah) stocks a wide variety of Chinese and Vietnamese groceries; check out the fat salted horse beans and marine vegetables. The store also has a good fresh fish department, which recently featured a coral-and-gold golden pompano so glorious it glowed. United Foods smells of ginseng and date syrup and the hundreds of herbs dispensed by a doctor in the back. This is a place to explore: grass jelly, wolf berries; fat apothecary jars of dried chrysanthemum and white rosebuds; fish dried stiff as a board.

Downtown L.A., East L.A. and beyond

The granddaddy of all Los Angeles ethnic markets is Grand Central Public Market. An open-air bazaar built in 1917, the place is dark and loud and packed with all sort of downtown denizen: those serving jury duty, tourists, lawyers, seamstresses and the thousands who come every day to buy food.

While you can get a Philly cheesesteak and chop suey, most of the stalls sell Latin products, including five kinds of fresh mole at A & B Coffee; more than 20 varieties of gorgeous, still-pliant dried chiles at Valeria’s; candies and nuts at La Huerta; and all parts of the pig at Economy Meats. There’s stand upon stand of fresh produce to peruse before you grab lunch at Ana Maria’s, which serves what may be the town’s best gorditas, or Maria’s Fresh Seafood, which serves a tart and fresh lime-juice-sluiced fish cocktail.

Numero Uno on Jefferson Boulevard in East L.A. may look like it’s in no man’s land, but the 32,000-square-foot supermarket is a staple of the neighborhood; so much so it offers shuttle service to those who buy more than $60 worth of groceries. Big and bright, the place looks like a major chain supermarket, except there’s mariachi music on the sound system and shelves stocked with mostly Latin products.

There’s also one of the longest butcher counters in Los Angeles, and a very nice squad of butchers ready to get you the usual and the unusual, like beef lips and chicken feet. There are cactus pads and epazote and a hillock of tomatillos in produce, and, sort of hidden away in a corner, a wall of necessary Mexican herbs and spices, such as hierba buena (spearmint) and hierba deconejo (Indian paintbrush).

One wall of the market belongs to El Gallo Giro, a chain that sells pan, tortillas and prepared foods. Customers pile aluminum trays with pan dulce (try the rosca de fino, a holy trinity of fat, flour and sugar) and bolillos (six for $1), the lightly sweet, nicely chewy elliptical rolls that go with everything.

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Getting started

Monterey Park, Westminster

* Hong Kong Market

127 N. Garfield Ave., Monterey Park; other locations in San Gabriel, Rowland Heights

* 99 Ranch Market

771 W. Garvey Ave., Monterey Park; for other locations www.99ranch.com

* Hien Khanh

9639 Bolsa Ave., #A, Westminster

* T&K; Food Market

Today Plaza, 9681 Bolsa Ave., Westminster

* Thong Loi

9695 Bolsa Ave., Westminister

Artesia

* Anuradha Silk & Sarees

18705 Pioneer Blvd., Artesia

* Surati Farsan Mart

11814 E. 186th St., Artesia

* Ziba Music

11808 E. 186th St., Artesia

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Fairfax District

* El-Ad Nuts

523 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.

* Fish Gal

515 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.

* Musicall

517 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.

* Schwartz Bakery

441 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.

* Solomon’s

445 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A.

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Hollywood, Koreatown, Thai Town

* Jon’s Supermarkets

5311 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood; other L.A. locations

* Karoun Dairy

5117 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood

* H.K. Korean Supermarket

124 N. Western Ave., Koreatown; other locations in Gardena, Rowland Heights, Van Nuys

* Bangkok Supermarket

4757 Melrose Ave., Thai Town

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Little Tokyo, Chinatown

* Asahiya Bookstore

Little Tokyo Square, 333 S. Alameda, Downtown L.A.

* Mitsuwa Market

Little Tokyo Square

* United Foods Little Tokyo Square

* Utsuwa-No-Yakata

Little Tokyo Square

* Far East Supermarket

758 New High St., Chinatown

* Peking Poultry

717 N. Broadway, Chinatown

* Superior Poultry

750 N. Broadway, Chinatown

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Downtown L.A., East L.A. and beyond

* Grand Central Public Market

317 S. Broadway, downtown L.A.

* El Gallo Giro

315 Mission Blvd., San Fernando; other Southern California locations

* Numero Uno

710 E. Jefferson Blvd., L.A.