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Manhattan Cheese and Gourmet Stores
By Andy Shay
Meredith and I lived in Manhattan for a few years in the early nineties. We,
and particularly Meredith, worked incredibly long hours, but we loved the work
and we loved the life outside of work. When you live in Manhattan there is a
special feel, like you live in the center of the universe. You are the cutting
edge and everyone follows you. With 10 years hind site I see that it is partly
true and partly delusional. Last weekend we escaped Toronto and our two children
and spent a wonderful weekend in Ridgefield, Connecticut and Manhattan. I took
the opportunity to look in on some of my favourite food institutions.
Stocking a gourmet store is a more difficult task that it used to be because
our tastes have all grown up. When I started working in fine food stores,
mesclun, baby vegetables, red tomatoes in winter, organic foods, exotic fruits
like lychee, pepino and mango, freshly baked crusty breads, prepared foods,
balsamic vinegar and olive oil were all brand new ideas and almost impossible to
find. Today we find all of these things in almost every supermarket.
12 years ago when I worked for the Gourmet Garage (Mercer St. and
Broome St.), SOHO was still very gritty. On most of the streets you could see
the bones of the grand old cast iron fronted buildings but they were boarded up
and used for industrial uses. These same buildings are now inhabited by Gucci,
Kate Spade and Balthazar. While the Gourmet Garage has moved from the original
garage (literally) to a cast iron dame, the feel is still the same. An eclectic
selection of well chosen grocery products, well cared for produce and meats and
a range of the city’s excellent breads are found. At one time Gourmet Garage was
importing cheeses from France directly, bringing a great variety of exotic
cheeses, but no more. They stock a competent selection of domestic, French and
Spanish pre-cut cheese.
A few streets over, Dean and Deluca (Prince St. and Broadway) is much
the same although some of the bloom is gone. The produce is nice, but it is not
obsessively perfect as it used to be. The baked goods look nice, but don’t beg
you to buy them. The esoteric grocery selection is competent as ever and the
breads and cheeses look fabulous. In front of the cases, in the cases, stacked
high on top of the cases, in an alluring way, the cheeses speak to me. An
excellent selection of artisan American (a growing segment just as in Canada),
French, Hungarian, Spanish, Italian and Dutch cheeses, many of which were new to
me. I would buy cheese here.
Over in the village on Bleeker Street (just west of 6th) I stepped into
Murray’s Cheese shop. The store was clearly recently renovated: it looked
fresh, warm and inviting. Murray’s has an excellent selection of domestic and
international cheeses, both precut and cut to order. The display is nice, but
not as alluring as Dean and Deluca. They have very informative product signs and
plenty of staff. They also stock an excellent selection of cheese related
paraphernalia and books. Murray’s also features educational seminars and one was
coincidently hosted
Gina
Mallet the week before I was recently there.
Traveling up 6th Avenue (at 12th St.) is Citarella formerly the famous
Balducci’s. Here is a vast transformation, I think not for the better.
Balducci’s was cramped, stuffed full of products, hanging from the ceiling and
crowding every surface, it was generally dark but the lights made the food look
like gems and that would sing out to you. It looks very spare and white now. The
meat and fish, the core of Citarella’s operation, was extensive and looked
impeccably fresh. The rest of the store seemed nice. The competent to
interesting cheese selection was all pre-cut.
In Ridgefield, Connecticut I visited Balducci’s. Balducci’s was
recently bought by a group of stores called Sutton Place Gourmet, owning Sutton
Place Gourmet stores in Washington DC and Virgina and Hay Day stores in
Connecticut. The original store in Manhattan was closed (as noted above) and the
existing Sutton Place and Hay Day stores were all re-badged Balducci’s. The
Ridgefield store was a little worse for the wear. While the store itself was
beautifully decorated, it was not busy on Saturday afternoon, the produce had
seen better days. The bakery department looked better than the average
supermarket’s. There was an interesting selection of grocery goods. There was a
small but competent selection of pre-cut cheeses.
On the whole I found cheese prices to be much lower than at home in Toronto,
sometimes almost by half. Perhaps this has something to do with our system of
import quotas. Each of the shop keepers that I spoke with was vaguely aware of
artisan Canadian cheeses but complained of the prices. Indeed, the only Canadian
cheese that I consistently found in shops was Chevre Noir, a Canadian
goat cheddar.
If you are going to Manhattan, other stores to check out for cheeses and
great foods would be Zabar’s, Fairway, Eli’s Manhattan and
the Artisan Cheese Centre.
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