La Casa Verde

This is the place to go for cheap groceries! I brought my mom (an avid Chinese grocery store and Farmer’s Market shopper) and she confirmed the great prices! There is a good selection of your basic fruits and vegetables here and it’s the larger one of the 2 grocery sections in GSM. MOST items are fresh, but there were a few that we picked up with some fuzz… and no, it was not a peach. The aisles are super tight, and it’s in GSM, so don’t expect luxury grocery store shopping here.
TIP 1) BYOB = Bring Your Own Bags! Each plastic bag will cost 10 cents. But if you really forgot your bag, just pay 10 cents. The bag is pretty big, thick and can be used again.
TIP 2) Make sure you bring cash… but in the case that you don’t, GSM has at least ATM machine for your convenience.
TIP 3) If you’re going in for a quicky, you can pay $ 2 at the Grand Central Market parking lot ($ 2 for the first 90 min). But if you’re going to spend a while at GSM eating brunch, lunch, or ice-​cream, you can always consider taking the Metro and stoping at Pershing station!
YAY!!!

Nice ripe fruits & fresh vegetables. Bright green thin asparagus bundles were $ 2 here Unbelievably dirt cheap. I got some fresh sweet smelling blueberries in their clamshells 3 for $ 2. The worker/​re-​stocker was super kind telling me everything was «bueno bueno». I now know where to go for dirty cheap produce that’s fresh & ripe.

Great selection of fresh produce, one of only two options on my recent visit to GCM. Somehow I figured there’d be more, but the prices and selection really couldn’t be beat and were better even than area supermarkets.
They had everything from bags of small avocados, and radishes, to the usual tomatoes and peppers you’d expect. There were some more ethnic items like nopales and bundles of cilantro, as well as small aloe very plants available– and everything was super reasonably priced.
Drawback is that everything is cash only, no EBT, did not see bags available so bring your own.

With food prices going up, I wanted to see if I could find a better place to get my fruits and vegetables for a better price. I was driving past the Grand Central Market and i thought I’d stop by to check it out. I’m glad I did because I found this awesome spot, bought 2lbs of Fuji apples, two boxes of blueberries and some cilantro for less than four bucks. Crazy. There were a couple of other vendors there but these guys had the best quality. I didn’t think any of the fruits were «ripe» like Winnie’s review but her review was like two years ago so it’s a bit outdated. They also had a large selection of oranges, other apples, pineapples, onions, peppers, bananas, and grapes. It’s pretty much like what you’d find at a Vons, Ralphs or Stater Bros but the prices are like 75% off. There’s also a ton of vendors inside where you can eat anything from tacos to persian food. This is worth checking out on the weekend. Parking is right next door with an hour free parking with validation.

Super cheap produce, but very ripe.
Today I got 2 pounds of vine tomatos for $ 1 (the guy rounds down on the scale) and a fat bunch of asparagus for 50 cents. How do you beat that?
They have all kinds of exotic produce not found at Ralph’s, or would cost 5 times more at the American Grocers. Can someone teach me how to prepare and eat cactus?
The drawback is that the produce is very ripe, near spoilage. I saw one of the workers stocking the other kind of tomatoes from a box where a few tomatoes had major mold. That white fluffy stuff is easy to spot. Make sure you wash everything and cook it well.
Other than that, it’s what gives Grand Central Market its name.