Las Vegas Indian markets offer array of goodies

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2000 | 9:17 a.m.

Local stores

Where do you get mangoes as sweet as sugar, a 20-pound sack of garbanzo beans or a tube of henna for tattoos, all in the same small shop?

Simple.

Just go to one of our colorful Indian markets, where a host of products and foods from India are sold. You'll probably get more than you bargained for.

An Indian market is a video store, cultural center and social club. It's a place for dry goods, gooey sweets and over-the-counter medicines. But most of all, it is a cultural encounter that is never dull, and in this city, further proof of the melting pot that is Las Vegas at the dawn of the 21st century.

We have three Indian markets at present: India Sweets and Spices, India Spices and India Market. Each one has its own distinctive character, and a slightly different inventory of exotic things to buy.

Viral Mehta is the young, personable manager of India Sweets and Spices. He smiles shyly as he informs me that the majority of his customers are from India or Pakistan. Then he adds that locals who originally hail from Ethiopia, Iran and Afghanistan stop by regularly as well.

This store, unlike our other two Indian markets, belongs to a chain of markets with the same name, based in Southern California. I've been in quite a few of those stores, and this one is a tad threadbare compared to them. That is because our Indian community is far smaller than the one in California, and a market here can't stock or rotate nearly as much inventory as one in California.

Still, this is a place to rent Indian movie videos for $1 a day, and also to buy a series of pocket-sized, English language Indian cookbooks, ones sold in a rack near the store's front entrance.

Here, you'll find cookbooks representing the varied cuisines from India's many states, all of them very different. These cuisines are a far cry from the meat-rich Mughlai style cooking of North India that abounds in America's Indian restaurants. What's more, you will find the ingredients to create these dishes in all three of these markets.

I poked around this market, and here are just a few of the things I saw. In the produce section, beautiful, small eggplants, the bumpy squash called bitter melon and big radishes. In the back of the store, where giant bags of rice line awkwardly constructed shelves, I spotted a 10-pound bag of Royal Aged Basmati Rice -- redolent of a fragrance essential to Indian rice dishes -- for $7.99. It's probably worth mentioning that the same bag of rice sells for around 50 cents less in Southern California.

On the front counter, there were boxes of sweets and snacks trucked in from California every Friday. These might be the triangular-shaped, stuffed spiced potato and pea snacks called samosa; ladoo, a milk sweet made from garbanzo bean flour; or many others. Naturally, though, the Indian community comes to buy these items as soon as they arrive. By Monday, the pickings are apt to be slim indeed.

India Spices, meanwhile, is the smallest of our Indian markets, and perhaps the quietest as well. Owner Karim Quassani is a Farsi-speaker (modern Persian) from Afghanistan, and not a member of the local Indian community per se. In his Twain Avenue store he sells a variety of Hindi-language videos, halal (like kosher, but for Muslims) meats and dry goods.

One of his aisles is completely filled with lentils, cracked wheat, peas and beans, all packed in plastic bags and sold by weight. There is a huge spice shelf in the rear, stocked with items such as orange peel, psyllium and dry spice. In a back case, there are bagged nuts such as pecans and almonds, as well as homemade baklava. On the front counter, there is apt to be pastries such as jalebi -- gold color fried pastry tubes squiggled together and drenched with honey-based syrup.

Thursday is the day to remember when you come to India Market, where the cheerful Gopal Patel awaits you. That's the day that the market gets fresh pastries shipped in from a place called Ambala Sweets in Cerritos, Calif., jalebi, ladoo, cashew burfi (a dense milk fudge) and several other gooey, colorful sweets or savory snacks. Most of them are gone by Friday evening.

Because the owners here come from India's west coast province of Gujurat, a few items sold here tend to be different than ones in the other two shops. From a bakery in Canada comes a packaged selection of Indian cookies. In the front freezer you find Indian ice creams from Deep, an Indian manufacturer. Those include unusual flavors such as fig, sapota (a tropical fruit) and saffron.

This is also a good place to buy an entire array of South Indian pickles and condiments from a company called Eenadu from Madras, India. In the freezer case, there is also an array of South Indian foods, for example: idli, the flying saucer-shaped cakes made from pounded rice; sambar, the tamarind lentil soup that is always eaten with idli; and a variety of spicy, lentil-based snacks.

I also found unusual things such as Vicco ayurvedic (a style of medicine practiced in India) toothpaste, tiny jars of mustard seed oil (ideal for cooking dishes from India's West Bengal province) and a line of hot and spicy noodle and cereal snacks in foil bags.

Naturally there is a gigantic video counter stocked to the gunwales with the latest hit movies from Bollywood (that's what the film industry in Bombay mockingly calls itself.) In fact, since India has become high tech of late, this market even has a good many of these movies on DVD. Who knew you could get that kind of item here in Las Vegas?

Actually, it appears that you can get just about anything in Las Vegas these days. And if one of these markets doesn't carry the Indian items of your dreams, talk to a manager, and it's a good bet that it will be on the shelf in no time flat.