I pretty much know where everything is in every supermarket in LA. Owen’s Market has the best meat counter. Elat Market has the best hummus and eggplant dips. Whole Foods, as much as I don’t want to admit it, has the best pre-cooked shrimp. The Farmer’s Market in Santa Monica is great for heirloom tomatoes. Fresh & Easy has the best olive bread. Bay Cities has the best baguettes. I could go on for pages. It’s not my fault. It’s genetic.
When I was younger, I thought it took five hours to drive from LA to Santa Barbara because my mom convinced us we had to stop to eat at least three times on the way (at John’s Garden for fresh juice, at the Malibu Fish Market for fried fish sandwiches and at some divey Mexican place in Oxnard for tacos). When I went away to college I found out it takes five hours to drive to San Francisco and about 1 1/2 hours to drive to Santa Barbara, and, in fact, you probably don’t have to stop to eat even once on the way.
I pretty much know where everything is in every supermarket in LA. Owen’s Market has the best meat counter. Elat Market has the best hummus and eggplant dips. Whole Foods, as much as I don’t want to admit it, has the best pre-cooked shrimp. The Farmer’s Market in Santa Monica is great for heirloom tomatoes. Fresh & Easy has the best olive bread. Bay Cities has the best baguettes. I could go on for pages. It’s not my fault. It’s genetic.
When I was younger, I thought it took five hours to drive from LA to Santa Barbara because my mom convinced us we had to stop to eat at least three times on the way (at John’s Garden for fresh juice, at the Malibu Fish Market for fried fish sandwiches and at some divey Mexican place in Oxnard for tacos). When I went away to college I found out it takes five hours to drive to San Francisco and about 1 1/2 hours to drive to Santa Barbara, and, in fact, you probably don’t have to stop to eat even once on the way.
Needless to say, my family is obsessed with food. We plug our favorite recipes at any moment we can. We plan our next meals at our current meals. And we literally faint when we don't eat every two hours.
My mother does her share of specialty food shopping—salmon pate at the Malibu Fish Market, fancy cheese at the Beverly Hills Cheese Store, cranberries at Magee’s in the Fairfax Farmer’s Market—but she’s also great in the grocery store. She can go to one store and find everything she needs—even stuff that I’m convinced the grocery store doesn’t even carry. At least it wasn’t there when I looked for it.
My father, on the other hand, treats grocery stores the way French people do—he buys enough for the day and not really enough to make a balanced meal: a container of fancy olives, maybe a small container of cornichons and roasted tomatoes, a bar of chocolate, a fancy truffle cheese, an avocado if it’s ripe, a bottle of kefir. And if you ask him to buy something of which the market has more than two options, good luck. You won’t see your groceries back at home for another two hours.
For better or worse, I inherited my father’s relationship with the supermarket. For this kind of shopping, you have a few options. You either need to go to an overpriced, fancy market, like Bristol Farms or Gelson’s—I am boycotting Whole Foods because the one by my house is so terrible and you can’t really buy bread or tortillas at any of them, but it will do the trick if it has to and if you can afford it. The second option is to go to a specialty market like one of those Mediterranean markets on Pico.
If you’re going to go the Mediterranean route, I recommend Elat, but you’ll have to replace the truffle cheese with hummus and you better pronounce it HOOMOOS or they won’t give it to you. And you should probably add lemon salted almonds to the list because they’re delicious. But be careful of the pushy ladies that will try to cut you in line and shop out of your basket (you already picked the good fruit out of the pile, why should they?). And I don’t recommend trying to park in the lot. Just trust me. They also have really great deals on fruit, so be careful you don’t come home with sixteen cartons of strawberries unless you’re making four strawberry shortcakes and you actually know who’s eating them.
If you’re not prepared to battle through the Farsi and Hebrew jungle that is Elat, you can also accomplish this kind of shopping at either Trader Joe’s or the brand new Fresh & Easy. You have to stop at one of them anyhow for snack foods. The produce is better at Fresh & Easy, so if you’re lucky enough to live close to one, I recommend going there. The tortillas and the dairy are a little better at Trader Joe’s. But Fresh & Easy has phenomenal olive bread that you cook for eight minutes in the oven before you eat it, and their Spanish olive oil is great for dipping and their turkish apricots are like moist little clouds of heaven and their blue corn lime crackers are like if Ritz crackers were a delicious-flavor. And everything’s ridiculously cheap because it’s all self-checkout.
I know what you’re thinking. Even after all that shopping, I still don’t have enough ingredients for a meal. But I manage. And besides, there has to be some reason that everyone comes to my house when they’re hungry.
Owen's Market
9769 W Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035
(310) 286-9367
Website
Elat Market
8730 W Pico Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90035
(310) 659-7070,
Website
Fresh & Easy
7021 Hollywood Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90028
Website
Bay Cities
1517 Lincoln Blvd.
Santa Monica, CA 90401
(310) 395-8279
Website
(CLOSED MONDAYS)
John's Garden
3835 Cross Creek Road
Malibu, CA 90265
(310) 456-6895
Malibu Fish & Seafood
25653 Pacific Coast Highway
Malibu, CA 90265
(310) 456-3430
Website
Cheese Store of Beverly Hills
419 N. Beverly Drive
Beverly Hills, CA 90210
(310) 278-2855
Website
Maia Harari is a writer and choreographer. Her most recent credits include It's All in Your Head, 2003 and Danse Macabre, 2000, and she is currently working on Confetti, an episodic internet series chronicling the lives of twenty-somethings running wild in LA. She currently lives in Los Angeles.