UWS Cult Grocery Stores; Waiting for Wegmans

By Deborah Baldwin

All it took was a photo and a brief story a few weeks ago in West Side Rag to bring out frenzied foodies anticipating the opening of the next great cult grocery store in the neighborhood.

“Sooo excited! Love Wegmans,” wrote one reader; “This is by far the best grocery store I’ve been to,” said another. A third predicted: “It’s going to be a nightmare to get in the first few weeks after opening because ppl will act as if it will never be open again.”

What is it about Wegmans and a handful of other grocery stores that inspires such excitement? For starters, they don’t play by the usual rules: one-stop shopping, lowest prices win. Instead, each profits from a phenomenon known among retailers as “consumer-brand identification.” The idea here is that brand loyalty helps people define who they are, as does what they choose to buy, be it a sustainably harvested ear of corn or pricey Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee. Add to this the fact that grocery shopping is a form of entertainment, and you can see why some gravitate to stores with distinct personalities and product lines. 

Zabar’s Forever

The granddaddy of Upper West Side cult groceries is Zabar’s, at 2245 Broadway near West 80th Street, which is rapidly approaching its 91st year as a deliciously eccentric and beloved brand. Simply holding one’s own in the Zabar’s breadline screams, “I am an Upper West Sider.” 

Zabar’s has deals, but saving money is not the object. Once you’ve invested the effort to navigate to the right counter, does the cost of its coveted smoked sturgeon really matter? (OK: $69 a pound.) 

While Zabar’s likes to identify itself as the original UWS appetizing store, it’s more like a high-end deli crossed with a French covered market. Before you can get to the storied fish counter, or even pick up a tuna sandwich, you must pass through the cheese section, which is less like a section and more like a sensory experience. Is the distracting sight of oozing Pont l’Evêque and aroma of Epoisse de Bourgogne preventing you finding the kosher manchego, fresh mozzarella, or Saint Agur blue you need for tonight’s dinner party? Just ask. And while you’re at it, think about picking up a bloc de foie gras de canard — it’s a cut above liverwurst. 

The store’s Upper West Side cred was sealed the day longtime UWS Rep. Jerry Nadler— on C-Span—brought a familiar orange-and-white Zabar’s shopping bag into the second impeachment hearing of then-President Donald J. Trump. The bag contained a babka and a copy of the Constitution, a staffer said.

Zabar’s is one of the few places where you can monitor the slicing of your lightly smoked nova before ducking upstairs to shop for an espresso machine. I still remember making my way there as a newly coined New Yorker, fresh from a backwater called Paris, and being amazed when a voice hollered over the din of holiday shoppers that customers buying caviar should proceed directly to the caviar express line. 

Trader Joe’s Secret Sauce

Famously cagey Trader Joe’s has a different angle, one that combines low prices, small inventory, mysterious sourcing, friendly staffers, and efficient checkout. Not to mention oddball products, aka “talkers” — or finds worthy of a conversation — which appear and disappear like celebrity sightings. “Since I don’t drink coffee, I was using the dark-chocolate snowcaps as a source of caffeine, to regulate my mood in the morning,” says one devotee, Craig Kellogg. “Which made it especially devastating when they discontinued that item.”

Where else but Trader Joe’s, an outpost of a German conglomerate, are you going to get frozen Chicken Tikka Masala, Sonora Style flour tortillas, Peri-Peri potato salad, and snacks served up with a sense of humor? Things like Bambas (popped corn grits, air-baked then coated in hot, salty, palm-oily peanut butter); stuffed pretzels; and oven-ready mini-croissants frozen in an embryonic state. Among the fastest-selling items: processed “heat and eat” hash browns. “Everything in there seems like it was chosen with me in mind,” Kellogg says, speaking for millions. 

But every cult grocery has its moment. And today, with nine locations in Manhattan, including one at 2073 Broadway at West 72nd Street, Trader Joe’s may lose some of the UWS’s restless hunters-gatherers to a Korean-American rival, H-Mart. 

H-Mart’s Magic

Originally a storefront in Woodside, Queens, aimed at homesick Korean-Americans, H-Mart has spread across New York, delighting all kinds of shoppers with its unusual array of products.

Home cooks in a hurry appreciate scaled-down portions of fish and meat already prepped for a wok or a single person’s rice bowl. You can look for grab-and-go packages of sushi-grade salmon, marinated beef, julienned pork, and sliced smoked duck at two UWS outposts: 210 Amsterdam near 70th Street, and 2828 Broadway at 110th.

Trawling the aisles at this colorful emporium is an indoor sport for regulars, thanks to an abundance of produce and gobsmacking numbers of competing kimchis, canned drinks, and powdered teas — not to mention eponymous pantry essentials like miso, chili crisp, gochujang, and fish sauce. “I feel like a welcome stranger in H-Mart,” says Susan Chumsky, a longtime New Yorker who takes her foodstuffs seriously. “I started going there during the pandemic, when discrimination against Asian-Americans was on the rise. I wanted to stand decisively against that trend, and the fact that I could buy such cool stuff there was a bonus.” 

The Amsterdam Avenue location, just two months old, bows to local tastes by sacrificing some of its shelf space to American standards like breakfast cereal, and the housewares aisle here could almost pass for one at ShopRite. You can find rice molds, Hello Kitty soy sauce servers, and melon-flavored soy drinks. Then there are all those snacks that cannot be explained (Limited Edition Korean Smoked Galbi Flavour Pringles) and those that cannot be ignored; Honey-Butter Chips made with “French gourmet butter” comes to mind) This is also a great place to shop if you have strong feelings about the many different kinds of rice in this world. 

Wegmans, When?

Wegman aims for a broader appeal through heapings of quantity and quality served with a dash of culinary snob appeal. A regional chain, it already has one store in Manhattan near Astor Place and another in Brooklyn. And now this smaller, third to-be on Broadway near West 64th.

But don’t bother asking headquarters how long that wait till opening will be. A press-shy publicist rebuffed a request for additional information, saying only: “In February of this year, a  long-term lease was signed for the space at 1932 Broadway where crews are clearing out the space and items left behind by the previous tenant. We continue to remain focused on our Astor Place store and growing our customer base in Manhattan.” As for Danny Wegman, he “is not available [for] interviews.”

This means you’ll have to drop by the Astor Place store (770 Broadway) to get a flavor of what’s to come, from shelves packed with well-priced house brands to piles of ripening produce, yummy arrays of prepared foods, and display cases with some of the freshest fish this side of Japan. Which is where much of the Astor Place fish is flown in from — as any discriminating New Yorker would expect.

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