Cherry Hill Gourmet Market opened its doors to the public for the first time last Tuesday, and you can barely tell floodwaters ever entered its storefront in the historic Lundy’s building (1901 Emmons Avenue).
“We were working night and day, day and night, 24-seven, to get back on our feet,” said owner David Isaev at a grand opening party last week, attended by Assemblymembers Steven Cymbrowitz and Helene Weinstein, Councilman Michael Nelson, and Community Board 15 Chairperson Theresa Scavo.
During the worst of Superstorm Sandy, several feet of water rushed over the Bay’s walls and barreled into the building – ruining the building’s interior, alongside tens of thousands of dollars worth of items and equipment. Cherry Hill provided the video below to Sheepshead Bites, showing the damage after the water receded.
Many readers have been asking about open businesses, especially restaurants, supermarkets and pharmacies. Later today we’ll publish a post about the area’s small businesses hit by the storm, but for now we’re asking for your help compiling a list of open supermarket and grocery stores.
Please put in the comments any supermarkets and grocery stores you know of that are open. Please do not post anything else in the comments here, or it will be deleted.
Aldi Food Market, slated to replace the defunct Pathmark at 3785 Nostrand Avenue next October, will be only half the size of its predecessor, but local pols say that it will still fulfill their promise of bringing in a notable anchor tenant to revitalize the commercial corridor, restore shoppers’ options and revive jobs in the community.
Sheepshead Bites has learned that the former Pathmark location, which occupied 35,000 square feet, is being subdivided into two storefronts, with Aldi filling 18,000 square feet of the property. The second tenant has not yet been signed. Both will have Nostrand Avenue storefronts (as opposed to Pathmark, which had its entrance on the south side of the building), and rooftop parking will remain at the location.
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Assemblywoman Helene Weinstein, Councilman Lew Fidler and Community Board 15 Chairperson Theresa Scavo joined with representatives of the Lefrak organization and Aldi market today to announce that the German-based grocer has signed on to replace Pathmark at 3785 Nostrand Avenue.
The storefront has sat empty since April 2011 as local elected and the landlord, Lefrak, scrambled to find a supermarket replacement – one of the top constituent demands, the pols said.
“This is a location that has hundreds of thousands of people desperate for a store they could walk to. I know because when I walk around and talk to residents, that’s the only question they want to know,” said Weinstein. “They don’t want to know what’s happening in Albany, they don’t want to know what’s happening in the budget. They just want to know, ‘When can I walk with my cart to go to the store and buy something?’”
YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Neighbors who want a Trader Joe’s to replace Pathmark at 3785 Nostrand Avenue may be happy to learn that Aldi, a low-cost food market owned by Trader Joe’s parent company, will soon serve up fresh produce and other groceries from the currently defunct storefront beginning late next year.
A customer service representative for the international company confirmed to Sheepshead Bites that Aldi is slated to open at 3785 Nostrand Avenue in October 2013.
Aldi, based in Germany, operates more than 1,200 stores in the United States, and is owned by the same parent company as Trader Joe’s. The company has been growing, with plans to add 80 stores this year to its roster of 75 existing operations. They opened their first two New York City locations in 2011 – first in Queens and a second in the Bronx. And, earlier this month, they celebrated the grand opening of a Manhattan location.
After 30 years in business, Brighton Beach’s Met Foods supermarket is closing its doors in just two more weeks, leaving neighborhood seniors distressed about future food-shopping endeavors.
The supermarket, located at at 100-120 Brighton Beach Avenue, is being replaced by a modern two-story office and retail complex. Rather than housing a different convenience store, the new complex will be open to a variety of vendors that will be able to sublet office-sized space, with retail on the ground floor.
But Brighton Beach locals are unenthusiastic about the change. Many Met Foods customers are worried about the inconvenience that this close will cause on the elderly population residing in the community.
“The first picture is my grandparents, my dad, and my uncle in front of the store my grandfather ran in 1962. The second picture (Ed. — below) is the same spot, 50 years later (note the giant tree that grew in that time!).”
144 Neptune Avenue today. Photo courtesy of Saul Braksmajer
What I love about the top photo is that you can see that they have advertisements for Green Stamps in the window, as well as products such as White Rose Tea; Schaefer, Schlitz and Rheingold beers, and — something I’ve never heard of — dual filter cigarettes. They also sold giant Lipton mushrooms, which, as I previously mentioned, I’m not much of a fan of.
Does anyone recall shopping at this grocery store? Share your memories in the comments!
THE BITE: Ah, the bourek, an unsung culinary character of Sheepshead Bay that’s probably as prevalent in this neighborhood as beef patties are to Flatbush, or roasted pork buns are to Sunset Park.
We owe thanks largely to the area’s dense population of Turkish Americans living in the area, but also to those whose cultures historically took well to this Turkish pastry, including Eastern Europeans and nations of the Caucasus regions – as well as to Sephardic and Mizrahi Jewry.
For the uninitiated, a bourek – or, more traditional, a börek – is a baked or fried filled pastry made of phyllo dough. It comes in several shapes, sizes and stuffings, and is often finished off in the oven with a nice wash and a sprinkling of sesame seeds.
Before there was Balducci’s, before there was the Chelsea Market, and even before there was Whole Foods – there was The Orchard and its owner Daniel Spitz, pioneer of the gourmet fruit and vegetable movement in New York City.
Established in 1957, The Orchard and its owners were the first to fly pineapples from Hawaii to New York City. They were even the ones to provide pineapples for the inauguration of President Jimmy Carter.
Daniel Spitz, the owner of The Orchard at 1367 Coney Island Avenue in Midwood, got some recognition on Thursday for his years of work and entrepreneurial spirit. He opened the store with only $500 in his hand, which he had earned previously from working on the streets as a local delivery man. Now at 84 years old and after 55 years in the fruit business, he was honored for his achievement and his rise from rags to riches.
BrightFarms is a 100,000 square foot Brooklyn rooftop farm operation located in Sunset park, and happens to be the largest rooftop farm in the world. The BrightFarms’ Brooklyn greenhouse grows up to one million pounds of local produce per year.
The partnership between A&P and BrightFarms helps develop a new produce supply chain—one that is thousands of miles shorter. Customers will soon have the opportunity to purchase locally-grown lettuce, tomato and herb varieties at their neighborhood A&P, The Food Emporium, Pathmark or Waldbaum’s.
Although it is not yet confirmed which stores specifically will be the recipients of BrightFarms’ local produce, A&P assures shoppers that it will be distributed widely throughout their metro-area family of stores.
“Partnering with BrightFarms is a phenomenal opportunity to provide our customers with the freshest, local, and most sustainable produce in the supermarket aisle,” said Sam Martin, the president and CEO of A&P, in a media release.
We predict that pretty soon you’ll be hearing buzz words like locavore in the produce aisle of your local Walbaum’s.
