Ethnic Foods

Everett Barker can see how the supermarket strike is affecting his independent market just by glancing at the dairy case. He's out of buttermilk. "It's something I wouldn't have expected before the strike," said Barker, vice president of operations for Wholesome Choice, an Irvine grocery store that opened in July hoping to appeal to the city's large Iranian and Chinese populations.

Shoppers at the Food 4 Less in Highland Park would seem to be spoiled for choice when it comes to tortillas. The shelves are jammed with more than two dozen varieties, from miniature corn disks to cradle a few morsels of carne asada to placemat-sized flour wrappers for molding monster burritos. But what appear to be competing products are really the handiwork of a single company: Gruma. The Mexican giant dominates America's packaged tortilla trade through its U.S. subsidiary Gruma Corp.

It is just a variation on fermented cabbage, garlic and chile peppers, but Asians are scooping up record amounts of kimchi, hoping Korea's national dish is really a wonder drug. Southeast Asians are stocking up on it. China has embraced it. And South Koreans, who already eat it with every meal, are buying even more than usual amid hope that word of its curative powers will boost national fame, culture and fortune overseas.

In the early days when soul food restaurant Reign was red-hot, it almost seemed to Gerry Garvin that chickens could fly. "We'd get 75, 80 orders of fried chicken a night. A night," said Garvin, inaugural executive chef at the Beverly Hills supper club, who now owns G. Garvin's on West 3rd Street. Reign was launched by National Football League standout Keyshawn Johnson in 1999. The crisp, golden poultry parts virtually flew out the kitchen.

Yuji Kawana watched as a conveyor belt carried row after row of bright pink-and-white fish cakes shaped like smooth, split logs into a massive steamer. Like his grandfather and father, Kawana makes kamaboko. For more than six decades, his family has satisfied what was once a craving unique to Japanese immigrants for the rubbery cakes made from a fish paste called surimi.

Just like his father and grandfather before him, Brian Kito grabs a steaming, 2-pound blob of rice and, in a matter of seconds, coaxes it into a smooth bun. Kito is making okasane mochi: large, double-decker pieces of steamed, kneaded rice that, when topped with a dainty tangerine, in Japanese culture are said to symbolize the new year and a hope for prosperity.

Before sunup on Tuesday, Celia Gomez's fingers were already cramped as she kneaded pounds and pounds of masa. Then she packed cheese, green sauce, pineapples and even coconuts into the dough and rolled the mix into corn husks. Gomez fired up the stove top, put the creations in industrial-sized steamers and monitored them for two hours.

Burned by dot-coms and telecom, some investors are thinking enchiladas rather than e-commerce, burritos instead of broadband. Or in Rick Palmer's case: salsa. The food industry veteran, with the help of a San Francisco investment firm, in recent weeks has quadrupled annual sales of his Senor Felix Foods to $100 million by buying up the nation's top-selling refrigerated salsa brand and another dip rival.

It's a drink so simple that probably the most amazing thing about it is that it took this long to cross into the mainstream where smoothies, milkshakes and Frappucinos flow. Here's how simple: Add fresh fruit to milk and blend. What you get is a licuado (pronounced lee-KWA-doh), traditionally blended for breakfast, light meals and snacks in Latin America, but now also being whipped up and served in restaurants in Hollywood and L.A.'s trend-sensitive Westside.

The mango did it. The Meyer lemon did it. Over the years, many fruits have crossed the barrier from exotic rarity to become available to all of us. First prized by immigrants or backyard hobbyists, they're seized upon by farmers looking for lucrative new crops. Then, they're propelled into supermarkets. Now there's a new one poised to make the leap, and it's safe to say it is the strangest one yet. The pitahaya--a.k.a.