Larich is a spice boutique at Majestic City with spices, ready-to-cook curries and much more at reasonable prices. Works well if you want to send a jar of pol sambol or dried fish abroad to someone who's missing home.
I usually try to avoid MC like the plague, but for some reason I constantly find myself there. The grimy floors, the balcony-gazes (although thankfully that nonsense has reduced over recent years), the dimly lit atmosphere and other such enigmatic characteristics of the place don't exactly make it a fun environment.
This last Saturday, I conveniently found myself ambling about aimlessly when I came across this place I'd seen a hundred and fifty times before but never quite noticed.
I'd avoided this particular niche because about a year ago, the area around the shop was shrouded in the unmistakable smell of curry powder, umbalakada and vinegar. They've since gotten rid of that, so it's much more pleasant to walk by now.
The Shop
Larich Foods is an international company that focuses mainly on canned and bottled spices, curries, meats, seasoning, marinade, pickle and on and on it goes. Basically everything.
In addition to their normal jars and tins, they've got king sized jars of kitchen basics like curry powder, turmeric, pure chilli powder and the like so that'd make storage easy and you probably won't have to go to the supermarket again for 8+ months.
The price range for these jars starts from Rs. 370 for items like pol sambol etc, and goes on to Rs. 730 for jars full of mutton curry, seafood curries and so on. The bigger jars cost upwards of Rs. 2,000+ but this is to be expected because they're quite literally massive.
A few packets of dried vegetables and spice leaves are available as well, but I strongly recommend you only get these if you're shipping them off otherwise it's a bit useless to spend an extravagant amount on something you can get at the market.
The Goods
We got 2 jars full of Brinjal Moju and Fried Ash Plaintain Curry, both priced at Rs. 370 each. Each jar can comfortably serve about 3 people, depending on how big the appetite. The ingredients listed were pretty straight to the point and there didn't seem to be any preservatives added.
The jars last a long time after opened thanks to a special thermal bottling method the company uses to package the curries.
The ash plaintain curry is full of thick pieces of, well, curried ash plantain. There really isn't any indication that they were fried save for the slightly tough bite they had to them, but otherwise it was pretty good.
The ingredients in this one are as follows: ash plaintains (obviously), chili powder, coconut mik, mustard, onion, green chilli, palm oil and salt.
Surprisingly, all these flavours came through, so win-win here.
Brinjal Moju is my all time favourite curry. I'll eat it with anything. While the contents of this jar certainly were good, they just weren't great. There's no soul here, but then again I can't really expect any since it's a packaged curry.
There's a lot of brinjal in the jar, so this could be shared between 4 people. Or more, if served sparingly. The ingredients here are: brinjal, green chili, garlic, ginger, palm oil, turmeric, mustard, sugar and salt.
The spice level is perfect and it could pass for a more introverted, long lost moju family member. I'd still eat it anyways.
Can we contact them?
Actually, this is where it gets inconvenient. They're virtual ghosts on social media save for their Instagram account and Facebook page. Phone numbers aren't available, so I suggest you contact them via Facebook Messenger.
Conclusion
Like I've mentioned throughout this article, their stuff is an excellent choice if your intentions are to ship them off abroad. Otherwise, if you're really keen on trying them out, then get a jar of sambol. It'll keep for a long time and can serve as a great sandwich spread or addition to curry.
