This Summer, We’re Eating in Grocery Stores

They’re more affordable, more flexible, and a lot more fun than restaurants right now.

Something exciting is happening inside the city’s supermarkets, bakeries, spice emporiums, Italian grocers, butcher shops, and Korean delis: They’re becoming eating destinations of their own. Shops like Kalustyan’s, Casa Della Mozzarella, and Marlow & Daughters have long bridged the divide between market and cafeteria; now that tradition is carrying through to an entire generation of spots that are more than stores but not quite restaurants, either.

They offer the freedom and flexibility we crave in the summer, when we plan ahead as little as possible and do the bulk of our eating on sidewalks, in parks, or, in the case of one place on this list, inside a butcher shop that cooks whatever you want on-site.

The dozens of businesses here are a fraction of what’s available throughout the five boroughs, of course, but taken together, they demonstrate the range of eating opportunities — the bougiest Tribeca farm stand, a Guatemalan deli, a weekends-only tamale destination to nurse a hangover — that keep everyone in this city so well fed. 

To read more, please visit New York Magazine’s Grub Street.