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But another significant piece of this cultural culinary landscape is the many international grocery stores located throughout the area.
These stores stock products — bought through distributors or in major East Coast cities — that people who have lived in other parts of the world would have trouble finding in supermarkets.
For those who are up for a culinary trip around the world, the people who run these stores are experts in products, seasonings and other ingredients you may want to learn more about.
We visited two of these stores in Lancaster to find out what they carry, what countries’ cuisines they represent and what some of their most popular products are.
Everest International Grocery
1621 Columbia Ave, Lancaster.
Open: 9 a.m. to 8 p.m. every day.
Bimal Rai says he and his three “brothers” from Jhapa, Nepal — Bishal Rai, Anish Tamang and Khem Dulal — took over the operation of the Everest store from the previous owner about three months ago. The four aren’t strictly related, Rai says, but they’re “brothers” just the same.
Rai, who has worked as an electrician in the construction field, is originally from Bhutan, but grew up in Nepal.
What countries’ cuisines are represented in the store?
“A lot of our customers are Indian,” Rai says. But the store also carries products familiar to those from African, Middle Eastern and other Southeast Asian countries. And Nepali cuisine is similar to Indian cooking, Rai says. “We use the same spices, some of the same vegetables.”
What do you like about running the grocery?
“Before we owned the business we were excited to be standing (behind) the counter and talking to the people. Like people from Africa, India, Iraqi, Sri Lankan, some Philippines, some Burmese. We have customers who are Spanish (speaking).
“And sometimes people say ‘I was just driving by, and I came inside to see,’ and they pick something. Talking with many different people is very interesting.
“Sometimes people come in and they have a picture on their phone, and ask, ‘Do you have this?’ I see some customers really happy. They say, ‘the thing I don’t find in any (other) store, I find here.’ Everything is here.
“It’s a small store, and we don’t have much space to keep everything,” Rai says. But the store does stock a wide variety of fresh, frozen and packaged products representing a lot of different countries.
Where do you get your products?
“Today one of my friends went to New York, and he’ll stay tonight and pick up (products) tomorrow. We also go to Philadelphia, to a warehouse. And we have delivery every 15 days from different vendors,” Rai says.
They also pick up Iraqi products — such as pita bread — from New Jersey, and African products from Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
What are some of your most popular products?
“We have paratha bread, that comes frozen — it’s a roti (a flatbread),” Rai says. “We have kimchi noodles, and smoked fish.”
Other products include large bags of white and yellow bunga flour — “it comes in every week, and it goes quick,” Rai says. For Nepalese cooking, he carries mustard leaf and mustard oil.
Another kind of produce is a long, fat variety of green plantains. “African people love it. African people come from very far away (to buy it). They buy a whole case; it doesn’t matter how much it is,” Rai says. Other produce options include turiya, a long green gourd, and tindora, a small, pickle-shaped gourd, both of which are used in Indian cuisine.
The store also carries a variety of spices and teas.
“There are a lot of customers who sometimes drive like 40 minutes, 45 minutes for one item because they can’t find it anywhere,” Rai adds. For example, there’s a certain kind of pita bread popular with people from Iraq that is just such a destination item, he says.
A special aisle to check out:
The produce aisle, filled with unusual fruits and vegetables loose in bins, from okra and gourds used in Indian cooking to long, pink-speckled flat beans called cranberry beans.
Ethio African Grocery Store
1027 Dillerville Road, Lancaster.
Open 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday.
Tekalign Chafo, originally from Ethiopia, has owned the store for about a year and a half.
“I opened it myself,” Chafo says. “Before this, I used to work for QVC … as a warehouse specialist, and then I drove a truck. I graduated from Millersville University in accounting, and then I was an accountant for QVC for seven or eight years.” When the local distribution center closed, Chafo decided to open the store.
He’s starting small, he says, but hopes to expand into e-commerce for his products in the near future.
“This is a very niche market, and people don’t get these products everywhere,” Chafo says. He’d like to serve areas outside Lancaster, such as Harrisburg, Mechanicsburg and Allentown.
Tekalign Chafo, originally from Ethiopia, has owned Ethio African Grocery Store for about a year and a half.
What countries’ cuisines are represented in the store?
Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigerian, Uganda, Kenya, Congo and different parts of east and west Africa.
What do you like about running the store?
“There is no African store here in Lancaster city … and there is a huge amount of immigrant population in Lancaster,” Chafo says. “For a lot of the west Africans, they don’t get their products, so when I opened this, what I like is serving people.” He says it has been important to him to provide products for “Africans, or people who at some point visited Africa or did missionary work (there), who, when they came back, couldn’t find ingredients to make” the dishes they loved there. After opening the store, Chafo recalls, a physician came in who had been in Africa in the 1970s. “He thought he had to go to Washington to get Ethiopian food,” Chafo says, and was happy to have found Ethio in Lancaster.
“And also introducing healthy organic food to the community, and providing healthy food,” Chafo adds. “Most of my products are organic.
“People drive from Allentown, people drive from Harrisburg, York” to shop at the store, he says.
Where do you get your products?
“Some of them are shipped, and some I have to get from Washington, D.C. ,” Chafo says. “For some there is a big distributor” who brings them to the store.
What are some of your popular products?
Chafo says he sells a lot of flour made from the teff grain, a high-protein, high-fiber grain that is unique to Ethiopia, along with injera, a soft bread made from teff flour and water. “If you go to an Ethiopian restaurant, you’ll see it,” Chafo says. It’s the bread that’s used to scoop up other items served on an Ethiopian dinner plate.
Other items include spiced, purified butter; fresh-cut local beef; spiced chickpea flour, which you can use to make stew; fresh yams from Ghana; jute, cassava and sweet potato leaf; kinnie fish (a saltwater fish) and kuta fish (a smoked fish popular in Nigerian cuisine); bags of fufu mix (to make an African dish made with starchy vegetables); kenkey, a Ghanaian corn dish; and Ethiopian coffee.
There’s also beso, which is a powdered roasted barley. “This, basically, people use as a protein shake,” Chafo says. “You put the powder in warm water with one or two spoons of honey in a jar and shake it. It’s a pure, organic barley.
“We also have spiced roasted barley. You eat it as a snack,” he says. “People normally use it for a dietary (aid). When you eat this one, you drink a lot of water and you don’t get hungry.”
Do you have a favorite Ethiopian dish?
“Doro wat. It’s chicken stew. And spiced chickpea flour stew; that’s very easy to make. You can make it in five minutes.”
A special aisle to check out:
The shelves of decorative Ethiopian cookware and serving dishes.
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