The large number of Indian grocery stores in the United States offer more than familiar spices, snacks, grains and vegetables. They are also a place to connect culturally with the local South Asian community.

As I munch down a certain favorite, sweet-and-sour, Indian snack mix, I recall my first time enjoying this zesty, crunchy treat back in the 1990s. My husband’s mother arrived from overseas and brought half a dozen bags for him. He was overjoyed. Hugs all around. She nodded knowingly—his American wife could never have guessed that this was the missing ingredient in a happy household’s kitchen cupboard! And, of course, some ground-roasted cumin, garam masala, good tea, and a dozen other food items that I found intriguing, mysterious and flavorful. After one spoonful of the snack mix, I understood why its arrival meant celebration.

These days, one need not wait for a friend or family member to arrive from India with a suitcase full of savories and sweets from the homeland. South Asian grocery stores are located throughout the United States and number in the thousands, according to online listings. High concentrations in California, Michigan, Texas and New Jersey reflect the density of the Indian populations in those states. Most mid-size towns have at least one Indian shop, often functioning not only as a place to pick up grains and lentils in bulk, but to connect culturally with the local South Asian community.

Closer to home

When Peeyush Jain and his parents first moved from India to Iowa in 1968, he recalls a less convenient shopping experience for his family. “The closest Indian store was in Chicago, a four-hour, 220 mile-drive away. It seemed like that one shop catered to most of the Indians in the entire Midwest. And if you were going to Chicago from Iowa City, you’d take orders from the 20 other Indian families in town and come back with a trunk full of food. Sometimes people ordered directly from the store, but that meant you had to pay for shipping, which people didn’t like to do.”

Now Jain, who lives outside San Jose, California in Silicon Valley, has half a dozen, well-stocked Indian markets to choose from within eight kilometers of home. He shops most often at Kumud Groceries in Cupertino, which opened three years ago just three kilometers from his house.

Like most Indian grocery stores in the area, Kumud is all vegetarian. The store is busy, with three cash registers and constant shelf restocking. Steady traffic flow means products turn over frequently and are fairly fresh, says Jain, another improvement in recent years. With increasing competition, many shops in the area offer better produce in a cleaner environment. “It used to be that the big store with the wide selection of produce wasn’t very clean, but now you have more choices,” he explains.

Items he finds at Kumud that he can’t find at the American supermarket include fresh chickpeas and long Indian green beans. They also carry a wide variety of Indian squashes like lauki. Recently they started carrying a line of organic Indian dairy products such as paneer and ghee.

A wider variety

Joy Annamma, originally from Kerala, shops regularly at Lakshmi Bazaar in San Jose, California. “I moved here in 1999. Then, sometimes, you couldn’t find what you need, but now you find all the items here. So many items. I came today for ripe mangos to make pickle,” she smiles, holding up her bag with two green mangos.

She comes in sometimes with her grandchildren to buy samosas and snacks, too. “Everything is here,” she says.

“We have a selection that surprises many people,” agrees Lakshmi’s manager, Shashi Satyanarayana. The store first opened in 1998, but in 2003 changed ownership, and by 2008 the small shop had doubled its size. “Parents who come to California from India to visit their children are surprised that you now get everything here,” she says. “They can’t believe that we even carry Indian vegetables and fruits.”

“In our frozen section, we now carry surti papdi lilva—a surprise even to me,” Satyanarayana laughs. She fondly recalls her own childhood experience, when her mother would travel to Bangalore for these beans and dry them to store and use later. Also known as avarekai or hyacinth beans, items such as these are hard to find even in big cities in India, according to Satyanarayana. “There, shops tend to carry only products popular in that local region, but here in California, our customers are from all walks, coming from all over India, not just from one particular region. So people ask us for certain items, and our distributor goes and searches in India, and then gets them for us to carry.”

A taste of the homeland

For Urvashi Narain, shopping at her local Indian market in Rockville, Maryland offers a taste of home beyond the food. “It’s very Indian. You feel like you’re back in Delhi,” she says. “It’s badly organized, but it’s chock full of stuff in a tiny space. The people working there are very sweet and friendly. And they try to make you feel like you’re getting special Indian discounts,” she says with a wink.

Narain shops for spices that are difficult to find at the typical American supermarket. “We also buy parathas, frozen foods, bhelpuri mix—lots of savory things from India that we love to get—things that I don’t have time to make myself. Or knowledge,” she laughs. She buys her golgappas to try and recreate the typical Delhi chaat house experience. “Of course, it’s not the same,” she admits. “But you have to settle.”

Step into any of these shops and experience the familiar smell of ripening mangos and asafetida, the soft sound of two aunties chatting in Hindi, rows and rows of rice, spices and chutneys, and a wall of Bollywood DVDs featuring posters of Shah Rukh Khan. It all comes together to create a pocket of India that feels like home for the South Asian community. Colorful signs adorn shop windows, advertising services and classes that appeal to the typical customer: an Asian beauty salon offering eyebrow threading, an upcoming classical Indian music performance, a lecture by an Indian guru and yoga classes.

At Dana Bazaar in Iselin, New Jersey shoppers come from all over the East Coast to purchase items in bulk. Several different brands of rice are sold in small quantities in up to 18-kilogram bags. Others shop here weekly for all their staples. According to the young, bubbly clerk, Phumi Patel, whose father manages the store, the main things people buy here are milk, rice and chapati flour.

Hasan Zafir, who moved to New Jersey from Nepal, comes to Dana Bazaar once a week to stock up on vegetables, spices, rice and dal. I’d say I buy 95 percent of my groceries in this shop, says Zafir. I live about 20 miles from here, but enjoy coming to the area and having lunch, and there’s a large shopping mall nearby.

From Dana Bazaar’s front door you can see two other bustling Indian grocery stores. People come from across the region for spices and grains at bulk prices, wedding shopping, snack and sweet shops, and a generally festive atmosphere full of South Asian friends and families getting the necessities.

Not just for Indians

Rosie Iapalucci of Washington, D.C. visited an Indian grocery for the first time last year when her husband, Mike, returned from a two-week business trip to Bangalore. “He was obsessed with Indian food. He came home and bought several Indian cookbooks, but when we saw the recipes, there were a lot of ingredients we didn’t know or couldn’t get at our regular supermarket. So we found out about an Indian store and went there to buy amchur (mango) powder, a ton of spices and frozen naan. I couldn’t believe how many foods they were selling that I had never even heard of.”

Shopkeepers report a gradual increase in non-Indian customers in recent years. Satyanarayana of Lakshmi Bazaar says when they first opened, it was only the Indian population shopping there, but now they have 10 to 15 percent non-Indians: “I think this is due to an interest in the Indian food we offer, such as samosas and sweets, made fresh here in the kitchen at the back of the store. And a lot of non-Indians come in asking for spices. The Chinese customers come in looking for henna for hair dye. Lately, they’ve been asking for turmeric powder. I think there was an article about the medicinal value as a cure for cancer. They’re really crazy about it.”

Iapalucci would like to go back to the Indian shop in Maryland to refresh her supply of spices, but it was located in a far-out suburb in a nondescript shopping center. “I’d go again but I can’t remember what it was called or where it is exactly,” she admits with a laugh. “It was in the back of a strip mall, maybe near College Park, Maryland, but you can’t see the shop from the road. It’s behind a restaurant and then down a long hallway. I need to find it again!”

A family affair

Many of the shops are run by family members. Husband and wife team together, father and daughter, or father, mother and son-in-law as at Desi Bazaar in Columbia, Maryland.

“My wife’s father bought this shop from the previous owner, also a relative, in 2006,” explains Pratik Patel, who relocated to Maryland in 2009 to begin his residency for medical school. He works part time at the counter to help out. He notes that business has increased steadily although they do no advertising or marketing. Instead they are known by word of mouth. “They’ve increased business by their good nature and customer service,” he says.

Chhanalal Patel chose voluntary retirement from a 28-year career as a middle school science teacher in India, and immigrated to the United States, where he began work at Target, a large discount retail store, in Ellicott City, Maryland outside Baltimore. There, he says, he learned a lot about American culture and shopping habits, and experienced every type of holiday—Christmas, Halloween, Valentine’s Day. He came to help his friend at Desi Bazaar on weekends and eventually purchased the store when his friend retired.

“The best thing about this shop is having our own store. We do the work ourselves. No boss,” he smiles.

Pratik Patel notes that Indians, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and lots of Americans shop here. The Americans tend to like the frozen foods—pre-cooked samosas, curries and papad. The most popular item is the chapati flour, followed by rice and lentils—especially toor dal. They also sell stainless steel cookware, henna, hair oil, incense, lots of spices and snacks. And they rent and sell DVDs. The busiest time is around Diwali, when they sell sweets and lamps.

“Our customers are like a family,” he says. “Just last month our computerized register system broke down and several of our engineer customers offered to repair it for no charge. They are ready to help us if we need anything.”

Satyanarayana of San Jose’s Lakshmi Bazaar agrees that the connections with customers are rewarding. “The best part of this job is interacting with people from different walks. You have to be patient, and a good listener, to hear what the customer needs. It’s a challenge to try to meet the requirements of each person and you learn a lot of things that way. It brings your own potential out. You come to know your plus points and your minus points,” she smiles. “You learn a lot about yourself and other people’s cultures from our different food habits.”

Jane Varner Malhotra is a freelance writer based in Washington, D.C.