How to Shop at an Indian Supermarket

[Woman] You know, for most occasions you can get by

with a white sesame seed, but for black tie affairs

your tuxedo sesame blend creates

such a sense of formal elegance.

You really need to have this in your spice wardrobe.

(upbeat jazz music)

What happens when a specialty food store just doesn't stop?

When its aisles start to resemble a Noah's Ark of

not only rice, lentils, and spices,

but edible flowers, Ayurvedic medicine,

hot sauces, food geek emulsifiers,

Kaffir lime leaves, and tiny frozen birds?

I'm Adina Steiman from Epicurious,

and I've come to Manhattan's curry hill neighborhood

to explore Kalustyan's, a legendary Indian grocery store

that goes far beyond the call of duty.

It's time to get lost in the super market.

It's very fragrant in here.

Like, you take a deep breath and it smells like

all the curries you've had in your life.

It definitely makes you want to cook something.

What really is the core of Kalustyan's is the spice section.

This just keeps going, on two sides,

all the way down this aisle.

You think you know cardamom, right?

It's like, the green pods and sometimes it's ground.

First of all, decorticated cardamom seeds.

Decorticated is just a fancy way of saying

that the seeds have been removed from that green pod,

and that's actually what you want

to ground to make cardamom powder.

Chile lovers' paradise right here.

Chiles from all over the world

and helpfully these labels all list the Scoville units,

the unit of measure for the spiciness of a chile,

just to give you a sense of what your working with.

Ghost pepper. Okay guys, watch out!

World's hottest chile grown in Bangladesh.

I actually feel like a little dust of it got on my hand

and like, it feels a little tingly.

(Calm jazz music)

A lot of dried fruit here.

A million different kinds of raisins.

You have the golden jumbo seedless California

raisin over here, and you also have these

thinner, narrow Persian green raisins,

which are really delicate and delicious and not too sweet.

South African golden raisins.

Originally founded in 1944 as an Armenian

dried fruit and nut market, Kalustyan's evolved into

an Indian specialty store in the 60's and 70's

to serve the growing local community.

Then, it kept evolving and expanding.

Now walking through Kalustyan's is like

switching channels between dozens of food cultures.

That includes Halva.

Halva is like a sesame paste candy.

It can be flavored with different things

like pistachio, vanilla, marble that means with chocolate.

Thank you.

It's delicious.

Really nutty from the sesame but also from the pistachio.

It has this nutty marshmallow-y aftertaste.

(slow jazz music)

If you don't want to fully commit to a whole slab

of one of these desserts, you have this

incredible assortment of single serving.

Things like chewy nugget toffee, dried mango in squares.

It's really like, a gorgeous assortment.

These are cultures colliding right here.

We've just spotted Lays India's Magic Masala potato chips.

Spice up your binda's moments.

It's curryish, it has like, a tomato note to it.

It's not even just curry powder, it's like

a chicken curry in a potato chip.

So it's really really good. (phone ringing)

Yes? (distant speech)

I totally get why the phone is ringing off the hook here,

because probably every food editor in New York

has called Kalustyan's at least a few times a month.

It's an incredibly useful resource for people

who want esoteric ingredients.

Do you wanna talk about squab?

So you have a lot of exotic birds that you normally

just find like, if you just special ordered them

from the butcher, only you can find them here.

You got your squab. You got your rabbit, your quails.

This is like Persian, saffron and rose water ice cream.

I'm pretty sure this is an imported Turkish yogurt.

Kaymakli, I think that's a dairy made from yak?

I'm probably wrong about that.

Either way, it has a layer of cream on the top

so it's really luscious and especially delicious.

After that world wind tour of worldwide food culture,

I'm as tired and hungry as any bedraggled traveler.

Luckily, Kalustyan's has a cafe tucked away

on the second floor with a mediterranean menu

and the world's most charming counter man.

Oh, look at this! Shanklish.

Shanklish?

Thank you. It looks amazing.

It's almost like za'atar mixed with fresh cheese.

It's delicious. Really, like, salty and tangy.

Thank you.

They just put together an amazing

combination platter for me right here.

Lentils with cracked wheat called mujadara,

couscous with spinach with more chickpeas.

They basically got chickpeas in everything

which I'm totally down with.

Curried chickpeas. Eggplant with chickpeas.

It's really, really good.

It's like fried eggplant that's then

simmered in this tomato-y sauce.

It tastes incredibly fresh.

They make everything here every morning,

and it really tastes like it.

Kalustyan's has nearly tripled in size

since my last visit a year ago.

And it's easy to feel overwhelmed in its maze-like aisles,

but thanks to the zen-like guidance of its staff,

I managed to keep calm and track down

my favorite brand of sun-dried eggplant.

Now if only they could do something about

the tingly chile dust that's still on my fingers.