The Grocery Goblin Guide to Eating Your Way Through Los Angeles Grocery Stores

The best hot bars and prepared food in town, according to Vanessa Anderson

When I was in New York earlier this summer, I gobbled up this Grub Street package on eating in grocery stores. By the time I finished reading it, I knew Los Angeles needed its own version of the list. L.A. has arguably the best grocery stores in the nation—better than New York’s, that’s for sure—and Angelenos love a hot bar. Plus, finding great prepared food is a lifelong passion of mine (don’t worry, I do cook). Fortunately, I knew just the person for the job. If you’ve been reading The Angel for a while, you’re already familiar with

Vanessa Anderson

, also known as the Grocery Goblin. Since I profiled Vanessa last November, she’s gone on to become a columnist at the Los Angeles Times (here’s her latest) and launched a Substack of her own (be sure to subscribe to

Grocery Goblin

). Los Angeles is lucky to have her. –Emily Wilson

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iPhone photography by Vanessa Anderson

Lunch options at LAX-C, also known as Thai Costco.

Last month, New York Magazine’s Grub Street declared that this summer, New Yorkers are eating at the grocery store. That does not mean New Yorkers are buying up groceries to cook with, no! That would be ridiculous and somewhat antithetical to the spontaneous spirit of the city in heat. Instead, they argued, because grocery stores are “more affordable, more flexible, and a lot more fun than restaurants right now,” New Yorkers are (or at least should be) buying prepared foods like kimbap and plov and stuffed flatbread, taking them to a park bench or a train car or the sticky stoop of a recently minted lover, and enjoying them, with glee I can only presume. Grub Street also included a sprawling (yet detailed) list of shops where New Yorkers are to procure a slew of hot bar delicacies, deli delights, pre-wrapped provisions, oh, the options! They are endless and it is summertime and sadness is fleeting and all is right.

Here in Los Angeles, where the reality of summer is nebulous at best, and oppressive at worst, Angelenos could too be eating at the grocery store. But are they? I have no idea. How could I possibly? I’m standing in the Echo Park Lassens on Sunset Boulevard, and they keep replacing the orzo salad such that I cannot understand how many people have dipped into it today. It’s mid-June and, inexplicably, there’s butternut squash not so much in but on the kale salad.

The farro salad is gummy and lifeless, serving no coherent purpose beyond graveyard for soon-to-expire frozen peas, the roasted cauliflower makes me question if I understand the word roasted at all, more stained than seasoned with turmeric, a careless handful of spinach thrown on top. In fact, almost all of the salad options seem remarkably unmixed, except for the artichoke hearts, which have transcended “salad” but not quite landed at mushy purée. At least Lassens’ prepared food is consistent; I can always count on loose gravy draped in rubbery film. And if I’m ever in a state of crisis so severe I consider taking part, I can count on a displaced smear of blue cheese just repulsive enough for me to hurriedly restack my compostable container. I love this Lassens, it is my anchor. The staff is kind and the peaches are ripe, but it simply can’t feed me, at least not like that.

When prepared food at the grocery store is bad, it’s bad. It’s more than bad, actually, it will leave you re-examining yourself, your choices, the state of eating, the state of living. It is the consequences we talk about when we talk about the Industrial Revolution.

I’m obsessed with grocery stores, I am attempting to visit each and every one in the United States after all. And, if I know one thing for sure, it’s that L.A. has some of the best and most beloved grocery stores in the country, if not the world. I also know that, aside from my dissatisfaction with the state of the hot bar at my local Lassens, prepared food in grocery stores across Los Angeles is bountiful and, in many cases, very good. NYC is a dining city, cloth napkins and metal silverware. L.A. is an eating city, paper and plastic. Meaning it must be out there, and it must be delicious.

So I set out on a quest, which manifested in the following list. There are a few parameters I took the liberty of setting. First, I categorized “grocery store.” For me, this means a place where someone could potentially do a full basket shop. Not a bakery, not a juice bar, not a deli with a tiny larder, I’m talking about proper grocery stores or butchers and fishmongers. I (or Emily) have visited every place mentioned on this list, which is by no means exhaustive of all the prepared food that exists (and is good) in Los Angeles, but rather a great place to start.

Super A
2925 Division St, Los Angeles, CA 90065 & Other Locations
There is something cinematic about this place. The thin red neon sign spelling “Panadería” casts tres leches as the star of the cold case, in all its perpetual ooze. The small murals dotted on the wall give more mise-en-scène than grocery signage, but the chicken grilled in the parking lot on weekends steals the show. On Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., a line forms around the grill for tender birds, charred over fire then slipped into a flimsy plastic bag, best enjoyed in the parking lot with your bare hands, dunked in one of the store's smoky salsas. Or later at home, wrapped in an equally charred tortilla. We come to this place for magic.

Tashkent Produce
5340 Laurel Canyon Blvd, Valley Village, CA 91607
The smell of plump piroshkis, succulent beef samsa, and plov bejeweled with raisins and chickpeas will lure you to the back of this Uzbek market. There, you’ll find a quaint display of sweet and savory baked goods, alongside a selection of Uzbeki, Russian, and Ukrainian delicacies. Stuffed cabbage, duck legs with prunes and roasted potatoes, and vinegary eggplant salad is an easy order. As is fried liver and pickled carrots.

Tokyo Central
1740 Artesia Blvd, Gardena, CA 90248 & Other Locations
Sometimes I wish I were three inches tall so I could summit the karaage Mount Everest at the flagship Gardena location of Tokyo Central. From the peak, I’d have a perfect view of delicate pouches of inari stuffed with crab and seaweed salad, rows of onigiri, and shrimp tempura that, when bitten, not so much crunches as shatters. Next to milk bread sandwiches bursting with fruit and cream, lines of Kagome juice boxes tile the cold case, their designs reminiscent of a paint by numbers. If I had to pick just one store on this list to eat from, it would be Tokyo Central. I could make the argument using the sushi bar alone, which offers a slew of quality options from rolls to chirashi. Beyond the main floor, the Gardena location sports a food court with stalls slinging takoyaki, tonkatsu, and ramen. There’s also a conveyor belt sushi restaurant on the top floor.

Erewhon
4121 Santa Monica Blvd SUITE 106, Los Angeles, CA 90029 & Other Locations
The soup is delicious, the juice is, too! In fact, the liquidity at Erewhon may just exceed that of its customers' assets. Kombucha, iced tea, kefir water, camel milk, CBD soda, and, of course, smoothies, there are more options to pair with your hot bar dinner than the hot bar dinners themselves. A far cry from the store's macrobiotic origins, in which fluid intake was discouraged if at all possible. The supreme novelty that accompanies a meal of buffalo cauliflower and mac and cheese from Erewhon cannot be understated, it’s like eating a Mickey Mouse-shaped confection at Disney World, or a croissant in Paris. It’s like eating a celebrity—but they were super nice and down to earth in person! They said they liked your shoes and you took a picture together. All that stuff is just okay—the cauliflower and the mac and the Japanese sweet potato. The reality is that what Erewhon does best stays just outside the limelight. It’s the soup. A slurry of leafy greens, cooked to near disintegration with plenty of garlic and olive oil, coconut and red lentil with a serrano kick drum, and health insurance-replacing bone broth integral to my first year in Los Angeles. Thank you, Erewhon, may your cauldrons ever bubble.