By Laura Weiss
With the new Upper East Side 25,000 square foot Fairway opening July 20, will Upper West Siders get Fairway envy?
The new store boasts three high-speed elevators to whisk you to the second floor. No balky coughing, wheezing contraption like the conveyance in the UWS locale. The aisles will also be wider in the new store, according to a Fairway spokeswoman.
What will Fairway be like without the Kamikaze shopping cart-wielding little old ladies jamming their carts’ wheels into your shins?
I for one will be sticking to the original Fairway on Broadway and 74th. The new one sounds too glitzy, too Upper East Side.
The new UES store is the first to open in Manhattan since the Harlem supermarket debuted in 1995. Located at 250 E. 86th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue, it means that Upper East Siders won’t need to schlep across the park to shop at the supermarket-cum-secialty food store. What’s more, the new store makes Fairway a player in the supermarket wars sweeping the city as Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods establish beachheads in Manhattan.
Here’s what’s being rolled out at the Upper East Side location:
- a fresh mozzarella station
- more than 50 kinds of marinated olives in tubs.
- sushi made fresh daily on premises; hot take out dishes
- specialty, organic and kosher departments
- butcher and seafood departments
- A “Fairway To Go” café, offering items like bagels, sandwiches, coffee, a chopped salad bar, including pastries in a separate space next door to the grocery superstore. There won’t be a full-service restaurant.
- over 600 cheeses
- over 100 varieties of olive oil
- gluten-free groceries and frozen foods
Laura Weiss, a journalist and food writer, is a West Side Rag columnist. Her book Ice Cream: A Global History came out this year. She blogs at Food and Things, where a version of this post first appeared. Photo via Fairway.
