Spice Station brings a world of flavors, rare spices and teas to residents of the Silver Lake suburb of Los Angeles.
Owners Peter Bahlawanian and wife Bronwen Tawse have traveled the globe to discover the most exotic and eclectic spices in the world. All told, 50 percent of the spices sold are organic, none are irradiated, and all are carefully tagged with information about price, country of origin, uses and medicinal purposes, where applicable.
The store includes exotic spices, herbs, salts, peppercorns and chilies, which are available by the ounce, quarter-pound or pound, including pungent Indian fenugreek, Indian urfa biber, Argentinean coriander, Egyptian dill weed, Syrian Aleppo pepper, Indonesian nutmeg and Szechuan peppercorns.
The store offers a multitude of rare gems from black lava salt, which boasts a strong “minerality,” to the pungent, smoky Chinese Tepin chili. It also sells sassafras leaves for those ambitious enough to make their own root beer soda. “I get people who walk in here with eyes wide open who have been looking for these things for ages,” said Bahlawanian, who also carries a lineup of natural cane sugars flavored with ingredients such as cinnamon, ginger and raspberry.
The couple has also trained the staff to blend spices, which enables him to offer options such as a salt-free blend and a “high desert blend” for tacos and fajitas. The staple spice remains harissa, which has “Moroccan elements for full-bodied flavor.” He recommends using the spice to season meat, chicken or ground beef sliders.
Spices are ground free of charge or customers can buy the whole pods, berries and seeds, and grind their own.
Bahlawanian believes that customers are used to paying way too much for spices. “When I started researching for this project, I started doing some pricing. People can often pay $165 a pound for basil, but you’re only getting a small jar so you don’t realize it. You’re paying for the weight of the container and the packaging, instead of actual product,” he said.
The shop has small jars of every spice available so that shoppers can sniff the products before purchase. Bahlawanian is also a recycle master – the entire store is constructed from reclaimed wood, and the displays made from former pallets.
In addition to two locations in Montreal, the couple plans to open more stores later this year.
