Where To Buy Bulk Spices in Los Angeles

IN A CITY AS SPRAWLING and diverse as Los Angeles, there’s no single best spice bazaar. Rather, your best source for spices here depends on two questions: where you are, and what you’re cooking. 

“You have to go where the people are to buy their spices,” says chef Johnny Lee of the Filipinotown restaurant Rasarumah (Malay for “house of flavor”). Lee struck gold when he ducked into Asian Mart, a shop he’d passed countless times on Third Street in Little Bangladesh, traveling between Rasarumah and his apartment down the street. 

“I figured I’d just pop in,” Lee says. “And they have a treasure trove of spices in there, mostly of Indian origin.”

Lee also likes NT Foods. Once known as New Taiwan Trading, the El Monte wholesaler specializes in Asian ingredients and is open to the public. He shops for spices such as Sichuan pink peppercorns, scrutinizing their appearance — nothing faded or too dried out — and of course, aroma, to assess quality. He also recommends using whole spices whenever possible. Forget cumin powder; keep the seeds on hand and just pop them into an inexpensive electric grinder as needed. That said, he still buys Baba’s Curry, a Malaysian brand of preblended curry powder, online for a mushroom curry clay pot currently on the menu at Rasarumah. 

Danielle Duran Zecca, the chef and cofounder of Amiga Amore, the “Mexitalian” restaurant she runs with her husband Alessandro Zecca, echoes Lee’s affection for the spice-purveyor-next-door.