Finding Ingredients, Secret Indian Grocer

One of the first things I learned when I arrived here is how much work it takes to procure ingredients for our home cooked meals. I frequently travel 40 minutes by subway to get to the neighborhood of Shekou. This is where the majority of westerners live and there's a couple small (expensive) specialty import shops that basically sell everything you can't get in the grocery stores; even the International grocery stores. Things like ground coriander, basmati rice, avacados, orange lentils, garbanzo beans, corn tortillas, vegetarian refried beans, edamame and ricotta cheese, just to name a few. I'll admit that I'm so used to having such a wide variety of ingredients available at my local grocery store (Berkeley Bowl - I miss you!) that I assume that they should be things that I can get easily here. I'm sure in other parts of the US I might have to go to a "specialty" shop also. 

As vegetarians we eat a lot of beans. And unfortunately all of the grocery stores I frequent in our neighborhood, about 6 of them, only carry a couple types. They are black beans, a red bean (adzuki or kidney), black eyed peas and green mung beans. There are no lentils or garbanzo beans.

Kerry's gifts to me

Pretty early on I had the luck to meet a guy named Kerry. He was being relocated and posted in an expat forum for anybody interested to come take all his masalas and spices. I jumped on that opportunity and ended up getting a lot of information from him while I was there. I think he would have been a good friend if he hadn't been moving. He told me about the best Indian restaurants and about a secret Indian Grocery store. 

I say secret because it's not a store front. It's in an apartment that you have to be in the know about. Getting to that apartment was hard for a variety of reasons. First, the lower floors are commercial and you can't get through that into the apartment side. You have to figure out how to go around back, past the security guards at the gate, to find the correct entrance to get to the apartment side elevators. Second, inside the apartment building there is security and you need to know that you can walk right by them and that the doors that have the keypad locks on them aren't locked. Once you get past that there's the elevators. There are 3 elevators, but you need to know that one goes to the even floors only, one to the odd floors, and one to all the floors. I'm sure they're marked in Chinese. Then once you manage to get to the correct floor you might walk around and realize that only apartments A-H are present. Where is apartment I, the one I seek? Well, you then need to figure out that there are two towers in this apartment building and now you start all over trying to find the entrance to the other tower. If you can get through all that and find apartment I, you will be rewarded with the cheapest and largest variety of beans you have ever seen besides every other ingredient you might need to make an Indian feast. This tiny bit of information is worth such a huge amount to our culinary delights.

It was a pretty fun adventure, though I was worn out and pretty close to giving up, when I finally found it the first time. Each time I go it gets easier and easier to find. 

I went today because after looking for a month now, I haven't been able to refill my coriander spice bottle. Of course they had it.

I asked them if I could take pictures, and they understandably told me no. I really wish I could show you a picture of this place. It's so fascinating! Instead I'll leave you with a video of one of the better nearby grocery stores.