and Moore Streets Markets:
A Taste of Old New York
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| Entrance to La Marqueta under Metro North's Tracks |
Years ago vendors sold goods and produce from pushcarts. Scores of carts lined city streets, not just one or two per block as you see today. This caused severe congestion and posed a threat to police and fire response time. Reformers balked about the unsanitary conditions. LaGuardia opened five food markets so peddlers could sell their goods indoors. Four remain open today. Visit, shop, savor their diversity and capture the immigrant experience of old New York.
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| Rainbo's Fish Market; Essex Farm Fruits and Vegetables |
• Essex Street
Market: In its early days it catered to the large Jewish and Italian immigrant
communities who lived in nearby tenements of the Lower East Side. Today it has the best
selection and most vendors (about 24) of the four markets. It bustles with activity. The smells and displays
of the artisan breads, cheeses, pastries, organic meats and fishes will
mesmerize you.
This block long
building has several restaurants including Brooklyn Taco Company, Essex serving
traditional Jewish and Latin cuisines, and Shopsin’s General Store specializing in
soups, sandwiches, Porto Rico Coffee roasted in Brooklyn, and Tra La La Juice
Bar with its assortment of freshly made smoothies, muffins, and scones.
Other shops are New
Star Fish, Rainbo’s Fish market, Formaggio of Essex with a fine selection of
handcrafted cheeses, and specialty foods, and Ron-Sue’s Chocolates. Try the
savory handmade truffles, bacon butter crunch or Bacorn (popcorn bacon). Stop
by Pain D’Avignon whose bread and pastries are served at many A-list restaurants. Check out Aminova’s Barber
Shop, a 2001 Village Voice Best, and Cuchifritos Art Gallery.
Location: Essex Street Market, 120 Essex Street @Delancey
Monday – Saturday 8 –
7 pm
Sunday – 10 – 6 pm
Tours: Call Susan
Rosenbaum, of Melting Pot Tours, at 646-209-4724.
The future of this
72-year-old market at this location is doubtful. It is part of an urban renewal
zone. Plans call for moving it south on Delancey Street.
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| Boaino Fruits and Vegetables and Mike's Deli in Rear |
• Arthur Avenue
Retail Market: New York’s most
authentic Little Italy is longer centered in and on Mulberry Street. It is
Arthur Avenue in the Belmont section of the Bronx, about a mile north of Yankee
Stadium a few blocks south of Fordham University. Albanians and Latinos are the
largest ethnic groups who live here but the stores and restaurants in this
vibrant area are mostly Italian. In late 1940 when it opened on the site of a
former sheep meadow, the market had 117 vendors squeezed into its small stalls.
Today that number is far less but vibrant feel and tastes of old New York is
strong. Stop by the Mount Carmel Gourmet Food Shop with its large selections
imported pastas, tomatoes, sauces, oils and Italian specialty foods; Peter’s
Meat Market sells Italian sausages and fine meats.
At La Casa Grande
Tobacco Company buys handmade cigars. A large photo of the cast of the Sopranos
smoking here hangs nearby. There is also Liberatore’s Garden Center,
Boaino Fruits and Vegetables, Arthur Avenue Pasticceria, and Mike’s Deli
and its huge selection of cheeses and specialty foods. Owner David Greco’s roots
dates back to the market’s beginning and his grandparents butcher shop. “People
return to the old neighborhood to shop every weekend. We get people from
New Jersey and
Connecticut. People drop by after visiting the Bronx Zoo or the Botanical
Gardens.” Greco said.
Enjoy the colorful characters, straight out of actor author Chazz Palminteri’s, A Bronx
Tale, a Belmont native, which starred Robert DeNiro. Greco and the Market have
appeared on the Food Network’s “Throwdown with Bobby Flay” where Greco bested
Flay for "Best Eggplant Parmigiana."
Location: Arthur Avenue Retail Market, 2344 Arthur Avenue @187th St
Monday – Saturday 8 –
5pm; Closed Sunday
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| Pablo's Place: Blending the Story of PR Food and Culture |
• Moore Street Market: Opened in 1941
the market serves Bushwick’s large Mexicans, Dominican and Puerto Ricans and
growing artists communities. Artists have moved into the old industrial loft
buildings over the past decade. Shops include Perez Tailors, American
Coffee Shop. Sit at their counter to enjoy tasty Mexican coffee
and food.
Shop at Abby Food Market or dine at the popular Ramonites
Dominican Restaurant – tables nearby. There is a religious herbal and botanical
store, a Latin Music Shop whose upbeat music fills the market.
You must visit Pablo
at his four-seat counter restaurant he opened three weeks before this interview
in December. Pablo had worked for a non-profit before embarking on his new
career. He talked about Puerto Rican cuisine with the authority of a television
Top Chief.
His explanation how
Puerto Rican, sausages, puddings, and other national dishes differ from
neighboring Latin American countries would make Ruth Reichl stop and take
notes. “My mother taught me. I
cooked for my seven brothers,” Pablo said. “I want to promote Puerto Rican food
and sell it with my country’s art and culture.”
Known as La Marqueta
de Williamsburg it almost closed in 2007 but with the city’s help the market is
back and expanding. It has partnered with Health First. Events are staged
around all the major holidays. There is a Moore Street Market blog. During the
holidays Arts in Bushwick co-sponsored an art and cookie decorating party.
Plans call for turning a vacant lot on Moore Street into an urban farm and
building a commercial kitchen to entice new vendors to fill empty spaces.
Location: Moore Street Market 110 Moore Street between Graham Avenue and Humboldt Street. Monday – Thursday 8
– 6 pm; Saturday 8 to 7 pm; Sunday 10 – 5 pm
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| Breezy Hill Orchard and Cider Mill and Tables |
• La Marqueta: In its heyday the
market, which opened in 1936, stretched from 111th to 116th streets and had 500 vendors. It catered first to
the Jewish and Italian residents who lived nearby, then to the large influx of
Puerto Ricans who came to the city in 1940’s and 50’s and settled in East
Harlem and the South Bronx.
This once bustling
market sits beneath the Metro North elevated train tracks on Park Avenue.
After years of
decline and false starts the market reopened a couple of years ago with help
from the city.
Building Four of the five building complex has several businesses
including Breezy Hill Orchard and Cider Mill from the Hudson Valley with their
free range pork, chicken sage ravioli, fruits, pies and sandwiches. Buerre
& Sel, a cookie specialty shop with booth at The Essex Market and bakes on
site, sells its scrumptious Coco Cayenne, Cranberry Spice and Espresso Chip
cookies and much more.
Ethnic Harlem is there with Mama Grace’s Afro Caribbean
Food selling pork snout, salt and link fish, and healing oils. The Urban Garden
Center, across the street on Park Avenue, has a 20,000 sq. operation here. Hot
Bread Kitchen Almacen sells an assortment of ethnic breads, pastries and foods
from the market’s on-site food start-up incubator. It is the first retail shop
of HBK Incubates a program that helps fledgling business start-ups run by women
and immigrants. It provides a shared space with a commercial kitchen space and
refrigerators. Culinary and business support is offered.
A second building
will open early 2013. The well
reviewed Nordic Preserves Fish and Wildlife has just opened.
John Colon, who manages the Breezy Hill, said, “This is all new and a lot can and will happen here. “I remember coming here as a boy with my mother. It was an vibrant part of the city’s history and El Barrio’s.”
John Colon, who manages the Breezy Hill, said, “This is all new and a lot can and will happen here. “I remember coming here as a boy with my mother. It was an vibrant part of the city’s history and El Barrio’s.”
Location: La Marqueta (El Barrio/East Harlem) 1590 Park
Avenue at 115th Street. Monday – Wednesday 8 – 5 pm; Thursday – 8
– 6pm; Friday – Saturday 10 – 6pm; closed Sunday
Photos: By Rudi Papiri
