We now have a database of ethnic food markets in the Roanoke and New River valley. Among those on the list are two in Southwest Roanoke County. Maybe you know them already. They’re Ambika Indian Grocery at 4520 Brambleton Avenue and J&L Oriental Food Mart at 3109 Brambleton. If not, you can search the database to get directions to them and the others in the region.

Food writer Lindsey Nair has a series of stories on ethnic food marts in the region. One of the places she features is the J&L Oriental Food Mart; you can take a video visit to J&L in the accompanying video.

Finally, data delivery editor Matt Chittum chats up the database in this post on how to use it — and add to it if you know of places we’ve missed.