Butchers and Bodegas

Last year the NY Times listed some immigrant-run shops in the city, including Foods of India on Lexington Avenue and West African Grocery (run by Koreans, in a testemant to NYC's melting pot nature) near the Port Authority bus terminal. Queens and Brooklyn may be home to ethnic grocery emporiums, like those in Flushing, but Manhattan still boasts the small shop and corner bodega. Of course, things are changing: "In southern Manhattan, the bodegas that are left cater more and more to the second generation and gentrifying masses, even in Latino hold-out swaths of Alphabet City and the Lower East Side."



Pueblo Deli Grocery, a traditional Dominican shop on Ridge Street and Stanton in the LES.


The Korean-run West African Grocery sells yucas, plantains, and a number of ingredients that may be unfamiliar to people without knowledge of West African cooking, like karaw, cooka, and efirin.

Browse the City Cook to find more local stores that cater to immigrants, like Alleva Dairy in Little Italy and the Asian Market Corp near Canal Street.

The Lower East Side has long been home to food shops that cater to the communities living here. In the 19th century, numerous butcher shops, for instance, lined the block of Orchard Street between Delancey and Broome. Austrian-Jewish immigrant Israel Lustgarden operated one such shop at 97 Orchard Street during the 1890s.

Below is an ad for Chas. Schubert's butcher shop, which operated at 92 Orchard Street in the 1880s/1890s. Mr. Schubert sold beef, pork, mutton, veal, sausages, and ham.