Big Apple’s Evolving Retailers and Restaurants

New York not only fosters trends, it gives them room to grow.

What’s new in New York City? Given how things change — and change quickly! — in the city and its environs, you might say “everything!”

The constant stream of people in and out of the city triggers a melding of different trends and tendencies. A fair conclusion is that New York not only fosters trends, it gives them room to grow, making the city something of an edibles laboratory.

Consider that New York’s independent supermarkets have thrived even as many of its chain stores have faded. The responsiveness of independent retailers is a factor in their success, but so is the support they get from cooperatives, not to mention the perishables markets operating in the city, including the Hunts Point Produce Market in the Bronx. Still, new chain supermarkets are looking to find niches in the region.

LET’S EAT IN

The New York region demonstrates that convenience looms large in the future of food.

In produce, fresh cuts, smaller package sizes and ready-to-eat meals and meal substitutes are in demand, and retailers are refining how they approach convenience food, recognizing the restaurant quality has to be the goal. Convenience food that’s comparable to, but less expensive than, restaurant takeout and delivery is a frontier that food retail has to explore, and New York is a leader.

LET’S EAT OUT

New York has long been a world leader in foodservice, but how the region’s restaurant business is developing is less a matter of Michelin stars as it is meeting consumers demands. Many prospective diners have specific food concerns, yet universally want to be enchanted by a restaurant’s fare.

Many restaurants are rethinking menus. In part, this is an aspect of chronic labor shortages, which has led to simplification of menus and more opportunism with specials, while still capitalizing on eating trends, local growing and seasonal supplies.

Atmosphere counts, too. At a time when more foodservice operators than ever deliver and offer pickup, a restaurant that has a fun, interactive approach to operations can have a critical advantage in developing a steady clientele.

Food remains a pivot on which the New York region turns, and, in doing so, the Big Apple metro continues to be a place where vogues and viewpoints mix and match to generate new notions about eating.

FRESH GROCER

Retailer Offers Value, Quality and Service
When The Fresh Grocer celebrated its grand opening Aug. 23 in Oakdale, NY, the grocer was ready to serve the town with quality food, local knowledge and competitive prices.

The Fresh Grocer is a banner proprietary to the Wakefern Food Corp., the Keasbey, NJ, retailer-owned cooperative. The 26,000-square-foot Oakdale Fresh Grocer is owned by K. Thompson Foods, a Wakefern co-op member.

“The new store continues our commitment as grocers to offer value, quality and service with freshly prepared, ready-to-eat meals, produce and groceries,” says Ken Thompson Jr., chief operating officer of K. Thompson Foods, Riverhead, NY.

Fresh is a defining quality of the store format.

“The Fresh Grocer is known for its focus on fresh prepared foods, affordability and quality,” says Thompson. “We know we can consistently deliver on those key elements, and believe that sets us apart from other retailers. As a family-owned company, we are also in the store on a regular basis, and we understand what our customers want and need.”

The Fresh Grocer concept focuses on being a convenient option for consumers, whether for a full weekly shopping trip, or a quick stop to grab the ingredients for that evening’s meal.

“The Fresh Grocer specializes in providing fresh offerings and prepared meals to go, including home-cooked recipes and a wide variety of dishes and meal options to serve the community,” notes Thompson.

The store opens to colorful fruit and vegetable displays in crate-style fixtures, some with shelving underneath selling everything from dried fruit to lemon and lime juice. The crate displays are color striped across the bulk presentation, making for a lively display.

More packaged produce fills a nearby open cooler case. The case also holds some specialty foods, including gluten-free products.

A long open cooler case mounts a range of products, including juices, fresh cuts, an organics section, bulk and packaged vegetables and fresh herbs. Colorful instructional signage above describes the products below.

Although the store isn’t huge by supermarket standards, the Oakdale Fresh Grocer does provide a wide range of Latin and tropical produce.

Big bulk potato and onion slant table displays have smaller complementary compartments above that hold garlic and a variety of squashes. A stand-alone case on the floor becomes a stage for a presentation of potatoes, avocados, zucchini, broccoli crowns and bags of yellow onions.

At the rear of the produce section, behind glass doors, is a cooler that has complementary seasonal products, which, on an early October store visit, included cider from the nearby Jericho Cider Mill. Other items offered include caramel apples, tubs of olives, fresh pasta and even beer.

Quality, fresh perishables and convenience all contribute to the charms of the Oakdale Fresh Grocer, but sharp prices help, too.

“We are really proud of our produce assortment and all our fresh offerings and the restaurant-quality take-home meals we offer with best-in-market pricing,” says Thompson.

FACT FILE

Fresh Grocer
K. Thompson Foods
1121 Jerusalem Ave., Uniondale, NY 11553
516-486-0517
www.shoprite.com/kthompsonfoods

IL TOSCANO

Authentic Italian Food With a Twist
Il Toscano serves up authentic Italian food, but adds some twists, particularly with specials that owner Alessandro Privilegi often thinks up while shopping at the Hunts Point Market.

Privilegi not only goes to the produce market personally, but the meat market as well, sometimes stopping by purveyors on Arthur Avenue, a famous Bronx, NY, destination for Italian specialty products.

The restaurant itself is in Douglaston, an affluent neighborhood in Queens, NY, and operates just steps away from the Douglaston Long Island Railroad Station, which means it’s just a 23-minute trip from Penn Station in Manhattan.

The daily menu has many Italian stalwarts, so the antipasti offerings include Calamari Fritti with roasted garlic aioli, and also Mediterranean Pulpo with grilled octopus, white beans, Romesco sauce and Andouille sausage. It also includes Mushroom Wellington, featuring wild mushrooms, asparagus, truffle butter, all in association with crisp puff pastry.

Salads demonstrate how the restaurant combines flavors, including those of produce items to intensify flavors, and include Insalata Toscana, with roasted beets, endive, watercress, Gorgonzola cheese and sherry vinaigrette; romaine with marinated artichokes, grape tomatoes, cucumbers and ricotta salata and white balsamic vinaigrette; and Baby Greens, with marinated eggplant, cherry tomato, spicy Pecorino cheese and shallot vinaigrette.

The calibration of flavors is evident also in entrees, such as Pollo Scarpariello, consisting of a whole baby chicken, Tuscan sausage, mushrooms, red bliss potatoes and asparagus.

Not everything has specific Italian designation and some items are New York regional favorites, such as the Long Island Duckling, which, at Il Toscan, is served with cabbage and crispy sweet potato in a honey peanut glaze.

Still, the specials are where Privilegi makes the most of his culinary imagination and his personal trips to purchase recipe ingredients. “We’re spontaneous,” he says. “I’ll be making up specials for the next few days when I’m up shopping at the market.”

Privilegi’s family has owned the restaurant since its opening in 1985, and it debuted with the idea that Il Toscano would give Douglaston a higher grade of culinary fare.

“We wanted to give people Manhattan quality food without them having to go to Manhattan,” he says.

The approach worked, and today, about 80% of Il Tuscano customers come in from east of the restaurant, which is not far from the border between Queens and New York’s Nassau County suburbs.

Privilegi considers his trips to the produce market in Hunts Point to be a keystone element in his work as a restaurateur.

“The heartbeat of the market is important, getting there, discussing what’s coming in next week. It gives us the ability to cater more to people beyond what’s daily on the menu. We run a lot of specials that are not specifically Italian.”

Privilegi says the connection to the markets gives his restaurant the ability to provide food that’s “a little more flavorful, that has a little extra life.”

FACT FILE

Il Toscano
42-05 23 St., Douglaston, NY 11363
718-631-0300
www.iltoscanony.com

MORTON WILLIAMS

Produce Department is a Healthy Lifestyle Anchor in a Small Space
The newest Morton Williams store in New York has a produce department that is unique, just like the other Morton Williams stores.

With almost all its stores in Manhattan, Morton Williams isn’t building to suit. Rather, the stores must fit existing space, often in apartments and other buildings that have set aside certain spaces for retail or restaurant development.

The newest Morton Williams, on 68th Street and Broadway, was just another challenge for Marc Goldman, produce director. To make the space work, Goldman considered how the store would be laid out and what path consumers would take. The result was a linear produce section that extends from the entrance into other perishable food departments.

With 15 stores in Manhattan and one each in Jersey City, NJ, and the Bronx, NY, Morton Williams is an upmarket, small supermarket chain that serves a mostly affluent clientele.

From an assortment standpoint, Morton Williams has the challenge of meeting the general range of products that shoppers need on a weekly basis and addressing the requirements of a population subject to busy schedules and, for the most part, equipped with small refrigerators. Many Morton Williams customers will shop three or four times a week.

Customers also tend to be health conscious, so beyond the floral table display and the on-the-wall fresh cut presentation is organics. Also on the wall, the organic section incorporates bulk and packaged produce across a product range from avocados to zucchini, with a few slightly more exotic items such as Delicata squash added to the mix.

Above the organic display is an area that Goldman had to carefully consider while putting the produce department together. The front wall includes store windows out into the street. The store extends the entire block from 68th to 69th streets, but, at just about 15,000 square feet, it is covered with graphic presentations spelling out the names of the perishables departments with accompanying graphics. One place where the window space is clear is over the cut fruit and organics displays.

Goldman says Morton Williams finds locations that suit its business model, then he goes to work with his team in making that work for produce.

“They get the space, and we’ve got to work with whatever we have,” he said. “I did the cut fruit low but spread out, then the organics, and then I put plants on top. You’ve got to make use of all the space.”

Across from organics, and another wall case filled with a wide variety of juices, are table displays of fruit and vegetables. Then, the department turns with the space to a side wall display of greens and salads. As for table displays, a presentation of Latin and tropical fruit is first after the turn.

Next to produce on the interior side of the aisle is nuts — all kinds of nuts, mostly in tubs, and the store’s shoppers snap them up. The nut segment generated a nice ring, and its abundant presence helps distinguish Morton Williams operations.

“We do a tremendous amount of business with it, and it’s all in our label,” says Goldman. “We have organic, conventional. We have larger tubs. We devote a lot of space to it.”

In considering the popularity of nuts and juice sold through the produce department, Goldman makes an observation, “Produce is becoming less and less produce,” he says.

FACT FILE

Morton Williams
E Kingsbridge Road, Bronx, NY 10468
718-933-5910
www.mortonwilliams.com

NORTH SHORE FARMS

Grocer Focused on Offering Produce That Keeps Families Healthy and Happy
North Shore Farms is a Long Island institution among the independent gourmet supermarkets in the region, and is known for its deli, bakery, upscale groceries, meat and produce, with fruits and vegetables getting a particularly high profile.

Two of the stores are in the eastern end of Queens in New York City, not far from the border with Nassau County, and one is north of the city in Westchester. The rest of the stores are beyond the New York border in Long Island suburbia.

Founded in 2003, North Shore Farms describes itself as focused on offering the foods that keep families healthy and happy, and it contends its “expert buyers” are constantly on-the-go, bringing in selection and value. It touts a farmers market sensibility, enhanced by the spirit of a specialty shop, and entrance ways are canopy topped, curtained and lined with produce.

North Shore Farms bends over backward to serve its customers. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, shoppers could always find the paper goods they needed, purchased from hotel and foodservice supplies, and a full range of produce when both product categories were a lot harder to find elsewhere.

On an October store visit to the North Shore Farms location in North Bellmore, products on display in the entranceway ranged from pineapples and pears to peppers and potatoes. Many of the products were on special, including Honeycrisp apples and red seedless grapes.

Once inside the entrance, a tiered display of mostly packaged produce, including grapes, kiwis, romaine hearts, tomatoes, grapes, and even cranberries, was conspicuous on one side, with a table display of similar products on the other.

The entire wing of the store is dedicated to produce, with the exception of the back wall, where seafood resides. The wall display goes from vegetables to greens to organics, with vegetable presentations, including cut product, to a refrigerated case of fresh cuts.

Table displays in the middle of the produce section run from wrapped packaged corn to tomatoes and related vegetables, as well as apples, pears, pineapples, mandarins and even pomegranates. Another table displays bulk potatoes and onions, as well as specialties, such as green plantains and malanga coco, to serve Long Island’s large Hispanic community.

The interior cold displays include a variety of juices and health drinks and a table full of fruit, including multiple varieties of apples and seasonal items, such as plums and mangos.

The fresh cuts, under the North Shore Farm banner, include single product chunks of pineapple and watermelon among other fruits, as well as party platters of mixed vegetables and mixed fruits, as well as store-branded guacamole.

The North Shore Farms circular is a primary advertising vehicle, and fans look for it weekly. However, it’s also active on Facebook and Instagram, with much of the content featuring circular previews that link back to the weekly promotional sheet.

FACT FILE

North Shore Farms
15301 10th Ave., Suite 2, Whitestone, NY 11357
516-883-8389
www.northshorefarms.com

SENZA GLUTEN

Restaurant Caters to Those With Food Sensitivities
Foodservice operators recognize that gluten-free eating is a critical consideration that they must address, and no eatery is more sensitive to the consideration than Senza Gluten.

The original Senza Gluten operates at 206 Sullivan St. in Greenwich Village.

A second, founded by a chef who was formerly affiliated with the first, operates at 626 10th Ave., near the Theater District in Hell’s Kitchen. The Hell’s Kitchen restaurant is officially called Senza Gluten by Jemiko for its founder chef Jemiko Solo and is affiliated with a gluten-free cafe and bakery at 171 Sullivan St. that opened in 2018.

Gluten-free is a bigger consideration in foodservice today for several reasons. One of the most critical is the ability to serve large parties. Many restaurateurs will tell you today that, without the incorporation of gluten-free, nut free, vegetarian and vegan food options on the menu, they may lose not only individual customers, but groups.

The Greenwich Village full-service restaurant opened in 2014 and has a declared focus on safety, particularly an assurance that no gluten is ever introduced into the food it offers.

Senza Gluten by Jemiko opened on 10th Avenue in 2023 and declares itself a place where everyone feels safe and can eat in elegant style amid a relaxing ambiance, and that includes vegan and dairy-free eaters, as they’ll find options as well.

The menus at both restaurants are based on Italian cuisine and offer familiar dishes, such as Calabrese salad with slabs of tomato and buffalo mozzarella cheese.

Although the core is Italian, both menus mix things up to take advantage of current food trends. The Sullivan Street restaurant has a salad menu that offers Rucola, including arugula, grape tomatoes and shaved Parmesan in a homemade citrus vinaigrette, and Mista, incorporating mixed greens, grape tomatoes and avocado in a balsamic dressing.

Highlights of the menu include Rigatoni Funghi E Speck, which is gluten-free rigatoni pasta with shiitake, portobello and cremini mushrooms, and speck, a smoked prosciutto, in a white cream sauce and white truffle oil, and Costolette Di Vitello, or marinated and grilled veal chop topped with sautéed wild mushrooms, drizzled with white truffle oil and served with sautéed string beans and house-roasted red potatoes.

Then, on 10th Avenue, pasta includes Ravioli di Funghi con Olio Al Tartufo Bianco, composed of Italian wild mushrooms and ricotta cheese-filled, gluten-free pasta, sautéed, drizzled with truffle oil and complete with Parmigiano-Reggiano, and seared wild Branzino crispy filet in shallots, heirloom cherry tomatoes, Agostino capers, lemon butter and white wine sauce served with sautéd spinach and garlic.

The bakery and cafe on Sullivan Street affiliated with the Hell’s Kitchen restaurant includes a limited version of the restaurant menu, as well as gluten-free flatbread pizzas and cheese bread.

An important thing to note is the food, whether in Greenwich Village or Hell’s Kitchen, is top quality so that anyone who is not on a gluten-free diet can have a fine dining experience.

FACT FILE

Senza Gluten by Jemiko
626 10th Ave., New York, NY 10036
212-933-4845
www.senzaglutenbyjemiko.com

SPRING SHABU-SHABU

Hot Pot Restaurant Allows Diners to Cook at Their Tables
Spring Shabu-Shabu has taken a fresh approach to a traditional Japanese and Korean hot pot restaurant and made it casual, fun and healthy, with a heavy emphasis on fruits and vegetables.

Spring Shabu-Shabu offers a particular selection of meat and seafood to diners who can order combinations they want, or no such proteins at all. There is an enormous buffet that includes some additional meat and seafood items, but overwhelmingly features fresh fruits and vegetables.

Each seat at the restaurant has a hot pot with a choice of broths, and diners dip and cook their choices right where they eat, or they can eat what they select raw. In addition to main and side dish choices, Spring Shabu-Shabu provides a variety of dipping sauces diners can choose.

Spring Shabu-Shabu has three locations, one near Boston, MA; one in Flushing, Queens, in a section of New York City renowned for its Asian restaurants; and the newest in Westbury on Long Island, amid the retail hub of Nassau Country, NY.

The original, says Spring Shabu-Shabu partner Jonathan Lee, is the restaurant in Flushing. Lee already was involved with a buffet restaurant chain, but he and his partners were looking at a new format to explore.

As Flushing evolved into the foremost Asian community in New York, hot pot restaurants were springing up, and Lee saw an opportunity. In its various accommodations to a wider audience, the company included both Asian and fruits and vegetables that have traditionally been consumed in the U.S.

The hot pots, heated and readied for each customer, as they are built into the tables, one per guest, offers multiple broth choices, including Dashi, flavored with Bonito flakes and kelp; Kimchi, which combines Dashi broth with cabbage, red pepper flakes, garlic and ginger; Pork Bone with a little kelp kicker; Spicy Pork Bone with added bean paste and soy bean oil; and Vegetarian, which delivers the flavors of mushroom and vegetables.

As Spring Shabu-Shabu added eateries, first in Natick, MA, then in Westbury, Lee witnessed the development of the customer base from heavily Asian to more general.

“I notice a lot more younger generation, non-Asian customers, more adventurous, and a lot of people trying spicier things. That helps. Now the demographic is all over the place, businesspeople, students, a little bit of everyone.”

The buffet includes rice cakes, noodles, fishcakes and a vista of seasonal vegetables. During a fall visit, an abundant array of produce included Asian vegetables and items often associated with Japanese, Korean and other Asian cuisines, such as bean sprouts, but American cooking items were prominent as well, including corn on the cob, cucumber, carrot and tomato, all cut for convenience use in the hot pots.

From the menu, customers order the main meat and seafood choices, including strips of beef belly, beef ribeye, beef top blade, pork belly, kielbasa sausage, pork dumplings and chicken, as well as shrimp, whitefish and in-shell clams, and they are cooked in the same broth as the vegetables, noodles and fish and/or rice cakes. The signature house sauces are available on the buffet.

The buffet is $22.95, with the proteins coming at an additional cost.

FACT FILE

Spring Shabu-Shabu
136-20 38 Ave., Second Floor, Flushing, NY 11354
718-395-8076
www.springshabu.com

SUPER FOODTOWN

Retailer Adjusts to the Evolving Neighborhood it Serves
In the middle-class community of Throggs Neck, NY, in the western end where the Bronx meets the Long Island Sound, Super Foodtown is a market that balances established and more newly arrived demographics, with a carefully merchandised produce section.

The store has changed with time and circumstances. In fact, the store as it exists today began its life 21 years ago with a partnership that purchased a small, 10,000-square-foot A&P supermarket and invested in a major conversion effort. The result was the 20,000-square-foot Super Foodtown that operates today.

Managing partner Harry Celentano says that, in general, the neighborhood is very mixed in population terms, so the product assortment must meet a varied range of needs.

In the produce department, greens open up the cold case on the exterior wall, giving way to fresh vegetables, including eggplant, zucchini and variously colored bell peppers then bagged and clamshell vegetables and kale.

On the sales floor, one bank of a slant table has New York apples and pears, designated by their own “locally grown” signage. The table also houses a display of mixed citrus and tropicals, ranging from lemons and limes to mangos and pineapples.

Bananas are popular enough to get a stand-alone display. On the interior side of the floor display, shoppers can find produce, including squash, garlic and shallots, as well as Latin specialties, such as chayote and yucca.

Potatoes and onions dominate one side of the other floor display, with the other room given to items, such as tomatoes and avocados.

“Things have changed over the years,” says Celentano. “Cut fruits are a big commodity now, which they never were. Generally, we have three people on staff downstairs just cutting fruit because people today, everything is convenience for them. We cut up broccoli for them. We cut up whatever. We have everything packaged. They would rather go that route. You have to change with the times.”

Store-cut and wrapped veggies on trays are prominent in a cold case at the end of the produce department most distant from the entrance, one that also includes mushrooms, bagged celery and packaged fruit.

The company is bringing in more organic and vegan items, both fresh and grocery, integrated into produce, including dressings, mayonnaise and cheeses. “That became a category on its own,” says Celentano.

Super Foodtown buys its produce from C&S, D’Arrigo and other local wholesalers, and so takes advantage of the store’s proximity to the Hunts Point Market. Celentano says having multiple resources is a must to keep the store’s produce department consistently stocked with well-priced, quality produce, as management looks for the best buying opportunities.

FACT FILE

Super Foodtown of Throggs Neck
2945-65 Bruckner Blvd. and Crosby Ave., Bronx, NY 10461
718-379-7100
www.foodtown.com/stores/foodtown-of-throggs-neck-bronx

VSPOT

Vegan Food With a Latin Spin
With its clean decor, metal chains, bright lighting and full bar, Vspot, in the fashionable Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY neighborhood, doesn’t conform to the stereotype of a vegan restaurant, and the menu doesn’t either.

Vspot puts a Latin spin on vegan food, which makes sense given how important rice, beans and fresh fruits and vegetables are to the cuisine.

On a weekday evening visit, the dining room wasn’t crowded, but Josve Reveles, running the front of the restaurant, was busy. He notes the restaurant had been in operation since 2006, and the owners felt a Latin approach to the food would provide the style and authenticity.

As is true of so many restaurants today, Vspot engages in a lot of pickup and delivery, with bagged dinners rushing out of the restaurant on an almost constant basis.

From a savory Lentil and Avocado Soup to desserts, such as carrot cake and a gluten-free Choco Brownie, the food is carefully prepared with a finely tuned use of spices.

Entrees include Bandeja Paisa, a dish named with a flag beside it to signal its Venezuelan origins, features rice, beans, an arepa cake, egg scramble, avocado, maduro, which is sweet fried plantain, chicharron in a vegan version of what is usually fried pork rind or belly, and carne molida, in a vegan version of ground beef.

The Plato Casado, also marked as gluten-free on the menu, combines rice, beans, maduro, kale, tomato and avocado, and Quesadilla Supreme incorporates refried beans, sweet plantain, two vegan cheeses, crema, salsa roja and salsa verde.

In some cases, Vspot stretches beyond strictly Latin cuisine, particularly in its selection of empanadas, that include Philly Cheese Steak, with mushrooms and peppers, as well as vegan meat and cheese and Jamaican Jerk, with spicy rice, collard greens, cauliflower, corn and vegan cheese. However, the empanada menu also includes Colombian Potato, with potato, vegan meat, corn and carrots, and Rice and Beans with Mexican yellow rice and Colombian red beans.

Salads, which come with kale, include Tortilla Chip Avocado and an avocado Caesar that includes what the restaurant lists as Chik’n, or vegan chicken. Appetizers include nachos, avocado fries, guacamole and chips, and Cicharrones with Lime, including crispy seitan and salsa roja, and Buffalo Chik’n Strips.

For those so inclined, the restaurant serves wine, sangria, beer and feature drinks, such as the Vspot Margarita, Caribbean Punch, Whiskey Highball and Cuba Libre. Nonalcoholic choices include the Vspot fresh smoothie, with banana, blueberry and mango, and homemade lemonade.

With friendly service and flavorful choices, Vspot is worth a visit, even if getting to Park Slope requires a little effort. The fact that it’s healthy shouldn’t get in the way, given the tastiness awaiting.

FACT FILE

Vspot
156 Fifth Ave., Brooklynn, NY 11217
718-928-8778
www.vspot.restaurant

WEGMANS

New Manhattan Supermarket Provides a Diverse Array of Produce
Wegmans’ first supermarket in Manhattan is thriving and provides a diverse array of produce as the centerpiece of the lower level.

The layout certainly is different from most Wegmans stores, but there’s a reason: The building is a classic piece of New York architecture that housed the addition to a famous retail palace, Wanamaker’s, from the time it opened in 1907 until the department store closed in the 1950s.

Wegmans opened in the space last fall after the company spent a couple of years setting a deal and developing the retailer space.

In an operation across two levels, the ground floor is largely devoted to convenience and prepared food. The produce section is an escalator ride down below. Given that the Brooklyn store generated more revenue via pickup and delivery than actual sales floor purchases, the downstairs positioning of produce has the potential for easier store operations, as workers have a bit more freedom of movement than in the level above.

Produce continues in the same layout in which it launched last year. A Wegmans spokesperson notes that the only change in the store over the first year in operation was one of engagement.

“As we continue to focus on best serving our customers in Manhattan, the decision was made to reconfigure the space to provide a more interactive experience for customers,” the spokesperson says.

The main focus, however, was not on produce in this case, but on the newly expanded Sakanaya and Seafood departments. Sakanaya is the Japanese take on fish markets, and includes prepared items offered to restaurant standards.

At 87,500 square feet, the Manhattan store is among the smallest in the Wegmans chain, but it beats out the company’s Brooklyn store, which is 74,000 square feet, the chain’s smallest location.

The produce section takes up everything in front of the escalator, although other departments are behind, including various grocery and the expansive Wegmans gluten-free offering.

At the entrance, the produce department has a seasonal flavor, with leading displays in crate, barrel and other traditional-style fixtures.

What’s immediately evident is not only the quality of the produce presented, but the degree of effort put into maintaining the low-profile displays. Merchandising is not only carefully considered, it’s also carefully attended, with staffers constantly stocking and arranging the displays. So, despite a steady heavy volume of shoppers, the produce department constantly looks fresh and inviting.

As might be expected given the urban environment, where busy consumers often want both healthy and convenient food, a separate cold case of bagged carrots and celery gives way to various bagged salads, including bowls and kits. A separate display offers bagged cooking vegetables.

On the floor, the presentation of staples, such as tomatoes are varied, while bananas have a value twist, given their 59 cents price signage. However, with the variety of ethnic groups shopping the store, and the tendency of New Yorkers to embrace multiple cuisines, the store offers a range of tropical and exotic produce items.

It may not look like a typical Wegmans produce department, but the Manhattan store offers shoppers a slightly scaled down, but full-ranging, presentation that provides an abundance of choice.

FACT FILE

Wegmans Food Markets
500 Brooks Ave., P.O. Box 30844, Rochester, NY 14603
585-328-2550
www.wegmans.com

WILDAIR

Restaurant Combines Flavors in Creative Ways
Wildair is a restaurant with superior white tablecloth cuisine in a more casual setting, suiting the once infamous and now hip Lower East Side of Manhattan.

The dishes are imaginative in the use of limited ingredients, including produce, which work together to create results. For example, the Little Gem salad has an interesting flavor profile and presentation. The salad comes in as a head of lettuce split into two pieces and filled with pistachio, herbs and a subtle dressing. As such, the bitter, umami and slightly sweet flavors blend in a savory synthesis.

On a recent visit, the Iberico Pork Pressa epitomized the restaurant’s approach, with a combination of rare carved pork over a horseradish and jerk spice reduction accompanied by lightly sautéed greens.

Other dishes that combine flavors in creative ways include the Pithivier, which mixes kimchi, Alpha Tolman cheese, sesame, and egg yolk jam; and the Pommes Darphin with Maine Uni consists of a lacy potato cake and jalapeño and shallot relish.

Even the dessert menu offers a fresh use of a produce item in the form of Mille Feuille with Concord grapes, Guinness caramel and sweet cream.

According to Jonathan Avila, manager, the roots of Wildair’s current menu go back to 2016 when the restaurant first opened with a tasting menu. Not long after, however, the owners decided they wanted a restaurant that better suited the evolving lifestyle of the surrounding area, one that was creative, but also would “give the neighborhood something more personal.”

As such, Wildair provides Lower East Side diners a restaurant where they can enjoy a menu that has a strong European influence, with a little Latin flare added, as well as just a touch of Korean, Jamaican and Irish style. However, it’s fine dining that relies on thoughtful combinations of simple components combined in a manner that mutually enriches flavors.

Overall, the approach rendered what visually has a wine-bar atmosphere (and Wildair totes an extensive wine menu), with fresh, natural, but sophisticated, food that has the kind of twists gourmet diners relish.

The dining room allows guests to sit at a counter looking directly into the kitchen if they chose. Otherwise, the tables are high and lined up one immediately next to the other in a now-trendy communal dining set up.

The clean, black and white color scheme is softened by the cream-toned chairback and brown seat fabric on the stool-height dining chairs.

The friendly staff is happy to discuss the food, the wine and restaurant particulars, making the whole proposition a happy addition to the once dark and dangerous Lower East Side. One additional plus: The prices are reasonable, particularly for Manhattan.

FACT FILE

Wildair
142 Orchard St., New York, NY 10002
646-964-5624
www.wildair.nyc