It’s summer. There’s produce, plenty of it local. It’s coming to supermarkets, restaurants and Greenmarkets throughout New York City. But one place you won’t hardly ever find it at is a bodega, those convenient, often round-the-clock shops where you can get toothpaste and telephone cards or tonight’s dinner of ramen and chips. Unfortunately, this is the only type of grocery store that exists in increasingly more communities here.

That’s why the Healthy Bodegas Initiative was formed in 2005, aimed at increasing access to fresh food and improving the health of all New Yorkers through its bodegas. Targeting the most underserved areas, or healthy “food deserts,” the mission has partnered with many bodegas and local organizations, such as the Greenmarket of Grow NYC (previously called CENYC). Check out Kerry Trueman’s great interview with the initiative’s founder, Donya Williams, on Food Systems NYC. And read below for an interview with Justone Bossert, Director of NYC Operations for Red Jacket Orchards, an upstate, family-operated fruit farm that’s joined the cause.

But first, check out their Kickstarter campaign, and pledge what you can to help them innovate and implement solutions to bringing good food to bodega shelves in the places that need it most. If you’ve already been deluged with Kickstarter campaigns coming from everyone and your cousin’s uncle, I can relate. But one play of that video might make you want to pitch in. Read on for Justone’s explanation of what your donation will go toward. And hot tip: they’ve “just harvested some early season white cherries,” which should be available at the Greenmarket soon.

According to your website, Red Jacket grows apples, strawberries, raspberries, cherries, peaches and plums — and then of course, all different varieties of which. That’s a lot of orchards! Am I missing anything else?

JB: It is a lot of orchards, and that’s good. It means we are increasing the amount of locally grown fruit available and saving farmland from being developed. A big part of our success is always having the next new thing and being very focused on what the customer wants. It is our goal to make fresh, healthy fruit available  to all of New York.

We grow every type of fruit this climate can support. In addition to the one you mentioned we also grow blueberries, wild black raspberries, currants (black, red and champagne), red and green gooseberries, nectarines, apricots, prunes, rhubarb, and grapes.

How long has Red Jacket Orchard been selling at the NYC Greenmarket?

JB: We started attending Greenmarkets in 1992 and it didn’t take long for gourmet stores to start seeking us out and we have continued to broaden the types of places that carry our product ever since.

How did you get involved with the Healthy Bodegas Initiative?

JB: We were contacted by Michael Hurwitz of Greenmarket and Donya Williams of the NYC Dept. of Health about the city’s Healthy Bodegas Initiative. This program had made some great progress reaching out to Bodegas and getting people interested in selling healthy food, but did not have anyway to get it to them. That is where we come in. We are one of the few farms that not only grow food, but also distribute it. It is part of our mission to increase the availability of great tasting local fruit and having our own trucks allows us to take on the gaps in the existing food system.

How many bodegas have you partnered with so far, and how did the owners overall respond to your idea?

JB: We have only just started, but we are already working with a dozen or so bodegas and the owner’s have been enthusiastic about a distribution system designed to get them better product to sell to their customers. Bodega owners often want to sell fresh produce, the problem is that there isn’t a system to support them. That is the problem we are trying to solve.

samples of Red Jacket Orchards apples at Union Square Greenmarket

Many bodegas in my neighborhood carry some fresh fruit, but not enough people buy them. How do you hope to engage and entice the community to purchase them?

JB: The main problem with the fruit that you usually find in bodegas, if they have any, is that it doesn’t taste good. The reason it doesn’t taste good is because its probably old, not properly handled, and certainly not local. Our program aims to help the bodegas properly handle and display the product so that in can compete with the unhealthy stuff. When people try something fresh picked and tree-ripened their reaction is “Wow.” All you have to do is let people know that this fruit is different and let them try it. The pleasure they get from tasting it does the rest.

What do you think the biggest challenges are going to be with selling your product in these bodegas?

JB: The biggest challenge is that the entire food system is stacked in favor of the least healthy foods. Turning that around is going to take a long time, but the first steps are simple: get fresh local food to the places where people shop, handle it in such a way to ensure its quality, and let people know it is there and why it is different. The good food movement has succeeded because fresh picked local food tastes great. Once people get access to it and try it they don’t want to eat anything else.

What do you hope the best takeaway from this project will be?

JB: The goal of this project is to create a self sustaining model for distributing healthy local produce to food desserts.  The best takeaway would be for this model to be adopted and adapted in other places it is needed.

There has been much talk about the dearth of fresh food in underserved communities throughout NYC. Have you been inspired by or took lessons from any other initiatives for the same cause?

JB: We are lucky enough to be living in a time and place where many people are attempting to correct these sorts of inequities. There are so many groups and individuals that we learn from, but I think the most inspiring thing is the feeling in the air that comes from a lot of little steps happening at the same time. There is a lot of energy around solving these problems and I hope we all see a lasting solution come to fruition.

Aside from donating through the Kickstarter campaign, what else can we do to lend a hand?

JB: The Kickstarter campaign is important, it will allow us to expand the program to the point where it will become self sustaining.  Other than contributions to the campaign, going to these bodegas and buying the produce is a great way to support the initiative. We will be listing the bodegas we are working with on our Kickstarter page.

It’s another video! Just when you thought I couldn’t get any worse on camera, here’s the latest installment of my ongoing battle with awkwardness. Um, um… yeah.

Greenmarkets are particularly exciting at this time of the year, because, like the public parks they often border, they’re budding with fresh, botanical diversity. Grand Army Plaza’s market is Brooklyn’s largest, with regularly a dozen or more vendors at any given Saturday throughout the year (it’s the second largest one in NYC, after Union Square). If this guided tour isn’t cheesy enough to turn you away from it, I hope you get to enjoy the scene soon, and cheer on your evidently very hard-working tri-state area farmers. (Video/genius credit: Matt Bagdanoff.)

like these dried bluefish, for cooking or snacking

some new teapots for that new tea

crunchy lotus root

wrappers of all tastes and textures, from wheat, soybean, rice, nori; for dumplings, spring rolls, sushi, wontons, you name it

not that you have to buy them, but chicken and pig’s feet abound

ditto for the fresh silkie chickens

Fully equipped with a medicine counter, butcher, cookware section, frozen section and even a fresh sushi counter, Dynasty is a quintessential Asian supermarket in every American sense of the word. Yet despite this proliferation of products and people, it never seems to reach the confused frenzy of carts and crowdedness as, say, Union Square’s Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s. I’ve never been pushed through a busy aisle, or needed to wait in a line longer than two people shopping at Dynasty, and its check-out staff are nothing if not almost maniacally efficient. It may not be the most beautiful store in appearance, nor have the most attentive staff. But unlike some Asian markets you can count on both Chinese and English signs and labels here. That’s why I recommend it to people who ask me where to buy some of the ingredients I use. And did I mention that the prices are low?

inexpensive fresh shrimp, though not the most carbon footprint-reducing choice (almost 90 percent of NYC shrimp is not domestic)

fresh, fragrant shiitake mushrooms, around $4/lb

fried tofu wedges, ready to eat

for those tired of corn starch, there’s always arrow root and water chestnut starches

sushi to go

In a way, Dynasty represents a very un-urban, specifically un-New York Chinatown way to shop. Still more bustling on any given day is the cluster of markets located further East on Grand Street. Here, food shoppers can compare on quality and prices, choosing whichever stand boasts the most fresh-looking fish, or the most crisp vegetables, on one particular day. They can even bargain with vendors, as prices aren’t stamped onto products with a red sticker. These differences make Dynasty all the more unique in its success. Its patrons know that they can score competitive prices for basics, like dried noodles or jarred sauces. Where else in New York City can you get product-of-USA sushi rice for 79 cents a pound (as I just did for an upcoming project)? Or a half-gallon jug of Michiu cooking wine for five dollars and a quarter? And when meat and produce is at their prime, you’ll only waste time making another stop.

Dynasty Supermarket
68 Elizabeth St.
New York, NY 10013

Last Tuesday, I was inspired. I don’t mean that I had rushed home with a fresh purchase of groceries and a spontaneous, must-make-tonight, dish idea. Or that I was struck with an urge to expound upon any national cuisine, penny-pinching technique, or environmental cause. No: I had just roamed the gourmet, European-style food hall in Grand Central Terminal, and the beauty of it was still sinking in. I was in food shopper’s bliss.

If atmosphere is crucial to the restaurant experience, it holds equally true of the shopping experience for the home chef. That, perhaps paired with convenience. Incidentally, at the bottom of the food market hierarchy in New York are those stores called “convenience,” or better yet, bodegas. These chalk up a hierarchy of their own, with stock ranging from the basest order of empty calories to ripe, fetching produce and ethnic delicacies. Then there are the supermarkets, which — while large and thus more convenient — are almost always teeming with carts and bodies like a bumper-car ring, and often feature winding, snakelike lines for the cashier that require hand-held signs and several employees.

This is generally not so for many of the ethnic street markets throughout the five boroughs, or the plentiful Farmers’ Markets — though they suffer from congestion and other inconveniences in their own unique ways. I hope to elaborate on the character of many different food markets by focusing on them one at a time in this blog. If you have any recommendations, just send them my way. For now though, why don’t we start at the tippy top: The mini hub of carefully curated specialty food retailers, the Grand Central Market.

I had perused this market countless times before, having used to work nearby and taking the 4 and 5 trains in and out of Manhattan each day. My eyeballs would grow so limp with longing that I’d buy the occasional really good cheddar at Murray’s Cheese, or a fine cut of meat or seafood on a whim, but it was always with cautious frugality. So I was honored to have the opportunity to throw all that to the wind last week, when I was invited to the market’s Fall Harvest Tasting Event.

As you’ll see scrolling down the photo essay below, I was not the only food blogger who took advantage of the event. But was I “eating out,” as a few of them asked? Well, even though there were plates full of prepared snacks, Grand Central Market is still just that — a collection of butchers, bakers, fishmongers, chocolatiers, etc. It’s just elevated to a level of refinement that makes it difficult to recognize it as such at times.

we all got a lesson in classic German canapes from Koglin German Hams

my favorite one being these Specialitäten aus Deutschland: pumpernickel squares spread with velvety, fresh ham fat mixed with hunks of ham hocks

I am so very pro-antipasti after sampling this tray from Ceriello Fine Foods

just a giant roll of Italian sausage behind the counter of Ceriello Fine Foods

I would be happy working around Li-Lac Chocolates, too

… wait, please — don’t speak. You’re ruining the memory for me (of the Alaskan salmon roe with crème fraiche on mini crepes at Wild Edibles)

flashy-lookin’ fishies, also at Wild Edibles

Ann of A Chicken in Every Granny Cart, not toting a granny cart, but her boyfriend Isaac

over at Murray’s Cheese, Jon Wright, president of the Vermont Cheese Council, was on duty to answer questions about “Vermont’s finest” other dairy product

Molly of Slow Cooked and Luisa, The Wednesday Chef

Zaro’s Bread Basket handed out free bags of bread to anyone who cared to carry them home

while their tarts and pastries were cut to bite-sized morsels

Greenwich Produce: a palette of color for the palate

the Feisty Foodie Yvo (here with a friend) has plenty of commentary on the night’s offerings at her blog as well

Dishes at Home showed off their prepared-food prowess with a sampling of crispy chicken skewers, goat cheese quiche and black bean cakes

Grande Harvest Wines kept the Pinot Grigio and Merlot flowing

one of Bella Cucina‘s several offerings, these aromatic spice blends

and in a true measure of hospitality, Penzey’s Spices (yes, just a spice retailer), baked these wickedly flavorful “snickerdoodle” loaf slices

I failed to photograph (well, at least) the fine offerings provided by Corrado Bread & Pastry, Oren’s Daily Roast and Pescatore Seafood Company, but you can be sure that they were fabulous. I am so grateful to everyone at the Grand Central Market to have been treated to this fancy free-for-all. It not only filled my tastebuds with resounding glee, but reminded me of the importance of the market. Now, if only every shopping trip were also free.