Mediterranean markets find a home in Las Vegas

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2000 | 9:34 a.m.

Most automatically think of France, Italy and Spain when someone mentions the Mediterranean, but there is an eastern side to this rich ocean as well. Four of Las Vegas' markets attest to that geographical fact, all wonderlands of Greek, Armenian, Arabic, Middle Eastern and North African culinary influence, not to mention just plain great places to shop for the adventurous home cook.

Habib's Mediterranean Market, 4750 W. Sahara Ave.

The biggest, brightest and newest of these markets is undoubtedly this well- stocked market in the Sahara Pavilion. It's owned and operated by Habib and Barbara Asad. They also run the popular restaurant Habib's next door, which is joined at the hip to this market by a common dining area.

As soon as you drive up, you'll see a huge picture window beautifully filled with a display of olive oils from around the Mediterranean. Then, walking in, you'll smell fresh breads made daily by master baker Ararat Oganisyan -- breads made right here in a back kitchen.

The signature bread is Barbari, a long, slipper shaped country-white bread crusted with a top layer of sesame. This bread is yeasty, tasty and gloriously inexpensive, $1.25 for a loaf almost 18 inches long. A variety of pastries and cookies are baked here as well.

The produce is interesting. Ask someone to let you taste sweet lime, a refreshing citrus fruit that is surprisingly nonacidic. Then you'll want to buy some at $1.99 a pound. Fresh figs, dates and Persian melons are sold by the pound, too, and so are seven varieties of fragrant basmati rice in burlap sacks. The best deal at the moment is Nasim rice from India. Buy two 10-pound sacks for $11.99 each and you get the third one free.

Exotic spices used around the eastern Mediterranean are sold in pre-packaged plastic bags. One example is sumac, the crushed berries from the sumac tree used to enliven kababs. Habib Asad, who is Persian, stocks pistachio nuts imported from Iran (which are smaller, greener and more intense than California pistachios), bottled green and black olives from several countries and pure extracts of anise and vanilla.

In the dairy case, there are fresh sheep and goat's milk cheeses from Greece such as Halloumi, Bulgarian feta and thick, creamy whole milk from Zahle in Cyprus, $1.99 for 32 ounces -- another bargain. In that case you'll also find a number of fresh fruit nectars from Turkey -- pomegranate, apricot, peach and sour cherry, all intensely refreshing.

This is a spacious, relaxing place to shop, with Persian classical music playing lightly in the background. Still, one wonders why Habib Asad didn't rest on his restaurant laurels. "Why should I send all my customers to another place to do their marketing?" he says, laughing.

Caspian Market, 2101 S. Decatur Blvd.

This quiet, modest little market, in Trader Joe's Plaza, also has an attached restaurant, where the specialty is a variety of kababs heaped onto mountains of rice. It belongs to a couple named Choukhachian. Aram, the husband, is from Iran. His wife is a native of Syria.

What they both share is a common Armenian heritage. Their market bills itself as a "Mediterranean and Middle Eastern grocery," but it is an excellent place for Armenian products; bakery items such as the ground lamb-topped flatbread lahmajune, the spicy Armenian sausage soujouk and louhoum, a sugar-dusted confection also known as "Turkish delight."

The best day to shop here is Thursday. On Wednesday evenings the market gets a huge shipment of fresh produce, specialty meats and baked goods from Los Angeles.

It's $3.49 for a package of sesame crusted Armenian flatbreads, five giant breads each one around 15 inches in diameter. The thyme, garlic and sesame bread, called ma-anesh, is $2.99 for a package of five. The shelves are stocked with a variety of Israeli products, as well, various pickles, Menorah candles and even bubble gum. Hey, Israel is a Mediterranean country, too.

Mediterranean Cafe and Market, 4147 S. Maryland Parkway

Meanwhile, over on the Eastside, personable owner Paymon Raouf is expanding on two sides. On one side of his popular cafe restaurant, he has just opened a new concept called the Hookah Lounge. It's equipped with 30 real hookahs (water pipes) for smoking, a full bar, 50 different types of tea and a gorgeous Middle Eastern ambience.

The market has expanded as well, and that's good news. It was cramped in here, but now it has become downright spacious; no longer does one have to squeeze one's way through narrow aisles. One aisle is devoted to a wonderful array of exotic jams, soups and pickles. Yet another is filled with specialty chocolates from Croatia, a largely unsung Mediterranean land.

The dairy case here is stocked with Greek, Yugoslavian and even Hungarian cheeses (such as the hard Hungarian cheese kashkaval -- hey, how'd Hungary get in here?) There are also goodies from Italy in this market -- balsamic vinegar from Modena, cold-pressed extra virgin olive oils such as Bertolli, $11.39 for a 34 ounce bottle, and Italian sardines.

Baked goods include real Afghani-style bread, a flatbread the size and shape of a small ironing board, and assorted Arabic style cookies. Also a curiosity is date syrup from Jordan, which the Bedouin use in pastry making, or mix with cold water as a refreshing drink to fend off the parching desert sun.

Aladdin International Market, 1775 E. Tropicana Ave.

There is no connection with the new Aladdin hotel-casino. This is, rather, a neighborhood market belonging to Arthur Asesyan, a Russian-Armenian.

This market is divided into two halves. One room is filled with fresh produce, the other with groceries. Most of the groceries in here are available in the other three markets, although Aladdin has a few items they do not have, such as the excellent Lurpak-imported Danish butter and a variety of non-Mediterranean Russian salamis and smoked fish.

But the produce section is outstanding here, and just as a fruit and vegetable market alone this place is worth a detour. There are, for instance, gorgeous Forcelle pears that look as if they jumped right off a Monet canvas, for $1.59 a pound. And how about fresh pistachio nuts, as delicious unroasted as they are roasted and salted, at $2.99 a pound, a good price.

Ripe tomatoes? Twenty five cents a pound. Even the real Aladdin couldn't conjure a price much lower than that.