Arthur Avenue, La Marqueta, Essex 
               and Moore Streets Markets: 
                   A Taste of Old New York 

Entrance to La Marqueta under Metro North's Tracks

Fiorello LaGuardia, a three-term mayor of New York, reformed a corrupt city government and its Tammany Hall leaders. He served the city during the Great Depression and World War II. A progressive he championed the working and immigrant classes and he implemented many changes to improve their quality of life.  

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.

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.

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 @187^th St

Monday – Saturday 8 – 5pm; Closed Sunday

Tours: Arthur Avenue Tour from ICE

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

Tours: by Cindy VandenBosch of Turnstile Tours 

Breezy Hill Orchard and Cider Mill and Tables 

• La Marqueta: In its heyday the market, which opened in 1936, stretched from 111^th to 116^th 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.”

Location: La Marqueta (El Barrio/East Harlem) 1590 Park Avenue at 115^th Street. Monday – Wednesday 8 – 5 pm; Thursday – 8 – 6pm; Friday – Saturday 10 – 6pm; closed Sunday

Photos: By Rudi Papiri

Five Cupcake Sweet Spots: Billy’s, Donna Bell’s Among NYC’s Best

Everyone loves cupcakes. Thanks to Sex in the City and its four glamorous stars love affair with Magnolia Bakery’s cupcakes, this delectable treat’s popularity has soared since its 2000 debut on the hit television show.  

Since then the cupcake craze has exploded. Lately cupcake shops have sprouted up, not just in Manhattan and Brooklyn but all over the country in Boston, upstate New York, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Oregon, Kansas and elsewhere fueled by the success of The Food Network’s Cupcake Wars and an onslaught of books like Martha Stewart's Cupcakes; the Cupcake Café Book, The Cupcake Diaries. 

Scores of blogs - Cupcakes Take the Cake, 52 Cupcakes, All Things Cupcake - have flooded the internet.

My coworker, Katy Saunders, stirred my interest. Katy, who grew up in Virginia and went to the University of Kansas, makes a good cupcake. She has shared her taste for cupcakes with her office mates.

Often she arrives to work with her “cupcake” carry case filled with her homemade savories. Twice in 2010 she won Baked by Melissa’s scavenger hunt and spoiled us with her winnings - 200 mini cupcakes. She also made Magnolia Bakery's 15 New York City Moments list.

I decided to take advantage of Katy’s expertise and check out what New York City has to offer. We tasted cupcakes from 19 different shops. Here is a review of five.

Little Cupcake Bakeshop is a Brooklyn treasure. It built a devoted following quickly at its charming Bay Ridge shop, after its 2005 opening. 

The LoBuglio brothers, Massimo and Luigi, followed with a second shop in Nolita, at the corner of Mott and Prince, across from old St. Patrick’s Cathedral in 2010. Nestled among Nolita’s nineteen-century tenements and fashionable boutiques, galleries and cafes, LCB, with its checkered floors and chandeliers sparkles as if ready for a movie shoot but still exudes charm and a neighborhood atmosphere.

Its colorful cupcakes, puddings, pies and cakes fill its long display counter. With seating for 30 plus and large windows it is an ideal place to watch NoLita’s interesting characters zip by while sipping fresh lemonade or an Nutella cappuccino with a scrumptious peanut butter butter cream or German velvet cupcake.

Katy calls it “The Best” with “perfect flavor and proportion.” And she loves the pink carry boxes.

LCB: 30 Prince Street; 212-941-9100; www.littlecupcakebakeshop.com

Two Little Red Hens…Once upon a time Brooklyn was all about pizza, hot dogs, knishes and stoops. But times have changed. Today you can add hipsters, dot.coms and cupcakes. 

Founded by two aspiring bakers, Mary Louise Clemens and Christina Winkler, Two Little Red Hens began in Brooklyn at a Farmer’s Market in 1992 before moving to Park Slope. They gained a loyal following and a high New York Times rating. 

In 2001 they opened a second shop in Yorkville. Five years later they split with Clemens staying in Brooklyn and renaming that shop Ladybird Bakery.

With Winkler at the helm TLRH is one of the city's best cupcake emporiums (and pies and cakes as well). It is a mouth-watering oasis amidst the choas resulting from the building of the second avenue subway. While many avenue stores have closed due to the upheaval the bakeshop thrives. It is homey with soothing colors and farmhouse curtains and seats about eight people. The L-shaped glass counter is filled with an assortment incredible looking cupcakes.

Brittany Omon, the super friendly manager, said “On weekends the line stretches way out into the street.”  When asked what is their secret she said, “Everything is good. We sell 40 different items including cookies, tarts, coffee and specialty cakes and cupcakes. We bake everything on the premises and we use best ingredients.”

Katy’s critique: “Moist, creamy fillings, sweet icing and good variety of fillings.”   Try the raspberry, coconut, and almond cupcakes.

Two Little Red Hens: 1652 Second Avenue between 85 & 86^th St. 212-452-0476;

events@twolittleredhens.com; www.twolittleredhens.com

Donna Bell’s Bake Shop opened in April 2011 in Hell’s Kitchen’s steps away from the theater district. It’s four person staff bakes, cooks, cleans and sells amazing cupcakes, muffins, Mississippi mud pies, brownies, cookies, breakfast biscuits, corn bread squares, casseroles and cold and warm sandwiches in a 500 square foot space.      

Their delicious cupcakes are filled with butter cream icing.  Other options include vanilla, blueberry, champagne, peanut butter and others.

Started by three best friends, actress Pauley Perrette, who stars on NCIS, Darren Greenblatt, and Mathew Sandusky, and inspired by Perrette’s mother, Donna Bell, a native of Alabama, the shop, thanks to its homey touches and Greenblatt’s outgoing persona and willingness to please and do things the best way possible makes you feel as if you crossed the Mason-Dixon line.

“We are based on a real person, Donna Bell, and her wonderful family recipes and gracious southern hospitality. That's makes us unique,” Greenblatt said. “We are humble, rustic, not fancy. Our baked goods are made daily on the premises. We use natural and fresh ingredients.”

The small shop is nicely designed. It is bright cheery airy and immaculate. There are no tables or chairs but you can sip coffeee at one of the two small padded window alcoves. 

Katy gives it a thumbs up and likes their cute protective packaging.

Donna Bell’s, at World Wide Plaza, 301 West 49^th Street; 212-582-8463 www.donnabellsbakeshop.com; For catering inquiry@donnabellsbakeshop.com; www.facebook.com/pages/Donna-Bells-Bake-Shop

Buttercup Bake Shop’s pedigree would place it at the top of any list automatically. Owned by Jennifer Appel, a clinical psychologist, who with a high-school friend, Allysa Torey, opened Magnolia Bakery on Blecker Street in 1996. When their partnership dissolved Appel, an author of Buttercup Bakes at Home and The Buttercup Bake Shop Cookbook, opened Buttercup in 1999. 

Appel transferred her Magnolia success to Buttercup's east midtown location. With its gentle colors, long counter and friendly staff it is reminiscent of a French or Belgium patisserie.  Cupcakes – German chocolate or Buttercup Golden with Vanilla icing - are among the best and their cakes, pies – strawberry rhubarb crumb, lemon meringue - puddings, and cookies are just as good. Katy likes their icing which is super sweet like Magnolia’s.

Buttercup: 973 2^nd Ave bet. 51^st & 52^nd Streets. Call 212-350-4144. http://www.buttercupbakeshop.com/

Billy’s Bakery has three Manhattan locations in Chelsea, NoLita and Tribecca. The one I know is in Chelsea, which is cute, and inviting decorated with “I Love Billy’s tee-shirts and bags." 

It has a vibrant yet gentle buzz as an ideal neighborhood meet-up spot sitting inside our outside on its benches. Owners Marc and Wayne opened Billy’s in 2003. One avenue west of the Chelsea boy strip, Billy’s, lures all, including the stroller crowd with its scrumptious cupcakes – try the yellow daisy and classic chocolate or maple pecan – cakes, cookies, scones, muffins and pies. 

Katy like its great color scheme and cute go-to bag.

Billy’s: Chelsea 184 9^th Ave; 212-647-9956 For other locations see: www.billysbakernyc.com; facebook: BillysBakeryNYC

Photos by Rudi Papiri

EMERIL LAGASSE SHOPS HERE

In case you have not yet discovered Esposito’s, one of the city's best meat markets, hustle over to Ninth Avenue and 38th street right away.

Best shop? Says who? Chef Emeril Lagasse, owner of Emeril's and Nola's restaurants in New Orleans, is a huge fan. Lagasse referred to Esposito's as “The pork store” on his show Emeril Live, on the Food Network and said "I shop there all the time."

Located at its current site for over 70 years Esposito's first opened on Mulberry Street in Little Italy in the late 1890's. Today the keeper of Esposito’s tradition is Robert Esposito who took over from his father, Leonard, in 1992. While earning a B.S. from Embry-Riddle University, Esposito, 40, had his career plans set in stone or rather in one of the store's choice cuts of file mignon. He wanted to run the family business.

Born on West 34th Street, Esposito packed groceries, swept, and made deliveries at 11 years old. He remembers the avenue filled with clothing, house wares, and ethnic food stores. “All the merchants knew I was Esposito's kid. Back then the avenue was a special place, much more family oriented," he said.

In the nineteen sixties Clinton began to decline. Shops closed and residents moved away forced out by drugs, prostitution, and crime. The avenue reached rock bottom about fourteen years ago. Scores of drug dealers and users took over two tenements across the avenue from the store. They operated a major drug operation for months. "One day two city buses pulled up in front and the police carted about eighty people away in handcuffs," Esposito said shaking his head.

When asked how Esposito’s survived those dark days he said," We struggled. We stuck to the basics with fresh products, exceptional quality, and friendly service. I learned a lot from my grandfather, Giovanni. He had tremendous pride in his work," Esposito said. "Even is in his nineties he always stopped by to make sure things were running right.”

This philosophy has worked. Esposito's Meat Market has a strong wholesale and retail base. People who grew up feasting on Esposito's meats still return even though they live in the suburbs. "We’re getting new customers as things improve," he said. "Today people buy more often but less quantity. They buy fresh and cook the same day."

Originally a pork store Esposito’s became a full service butcher in the seventies. Sausages, made from lean cuts of premium meats, are made in their factory adjacent to the store. A thirty-six foot long display counter is packed with breakfast sausages made of sage (served at The Four Seasons restaurant), organic chicken, and hot or sweet sausage with mozzarella cheese and broccoli rabe, steaks, lamb, chicken cutlets, cold cuts, and cheeses.

The provolone cheese and parsley sausage is Esposito's signature brand. They also sell prosciutto di Parma, Louisiana style Cajun Andouille, garlic mashed sausages, salamis and cacciatorini. Esposito carries superb cuts of beef, veal, venison, quail, organic ducklings from Long Island, Buffalo burgers and hams from Gwaltney in Virginia. He has antibiotic and hormone free chickens, cold cuts, eggs, cheeses and bread. At Thanksgiving they sell 30,000 pounds of turkey.

Esposito’s business clients include restaurants, the Food Network, Martha Stewart Living Magazine and local firehouses. Robert has appeared on the Food Network's Iron Chef and the shop was featured on food writer Molly O'Neill's, PBS special about great New York City markets.

Esposito's offers more than just a great piece of meat. You get a glimpse of old New York as well.

Giovanni Esposito & Sons Meat Shop; 500 Ninth Avenue @38th Street. Hours 8 a.m. - 6:30 p.m. Mon-Sat. (212) 279-3298.
Photo by Straycat