Arthur Avenue in the Belmont section of The Bronx is New York’s best venue for Italian food. Besides the big market, there are many adjoining shops: Bakeries, butchers, fish merchants, etc. Discerning SJ often visits to pick up wonderful food for his family. Doesn’t seem to mind the drive from his Brooklyn home. Besides retailers, Arthur Avenue has a number of good restaurants and pizza joints. One of HG’s favorite restaurant is unchanging, eccentric Dominick’s. No menus. No checks. Cash only. No reservations. You eat at long, communal tables in a room devoid of anything that could be termed decor. The waiter asks you:”What do you want to eat?” HG usually responds: “Clams to start” ( delicious platter of Clams Oreganatta is provided). HG has often followed with an oil and garlic spaghetti (to be shared) and a main dish of pork chops or chicken scarpariello (both accompanied by vinegar peppers and hot cherry peppers. The food is hearty, flavorful, authentic. The portions are huge. The prices are moderate (No checks, as HG has noted. The waiter tells you what is owed). No room for dessert. HG ends the meal with a digestif. Arthur Avenue is usually crowded with New Yorkers from all boroughs, local residents, suburbanites and tourists. Lines at Dominick’s can be long so plan on early dining. In a changing world, Dominick’s remains an unchanging stalwart.
The great food writer, Waverley Root, once defined cuisines by the oil or fat they used in cooking — lard in Germany; butter in Paris, northern France, northern Italy; olive oil in the Provence, southern Italy and most countries bordering the Mediterranean. In the Belmont neighborhood of The Bronx where HG spent his very early childhood, there was a cooking divide between the predominantly Italian population and the Jewish minority. Olive oil, of course, was an Italian staple. HG’s Jewish Mom never used it. Chicken fat was used for cooking and often covered bread rather than butter. HG’s Mom also used a strange substance called Nyafat for frying. Nyafat was pareve — that is it was approved by rabbinical authorities for frying both meat and dairy products. Don’t know why HG’s Mom used it since she was not strict about observing Jewish dietary laws. She used Crisco or Spry for frying sometimes but usually relied on bubbling chicken fat. Butter was used for frying blintzes.
There was also a shopping divide in the neighborhood. HG’s Mom shopped on busy, noisy Bathgate Avenue for chicken, fish, fruit and vegetables. Bathgate Avenue was known for Jewish merchants, bargains and strenuous haggling. Bathgate Avenue is no longer a low end retail venue. It is now a city-subsidized industrial “park.” Italian women shopped on Arthur Avenue and Arthur Avenue (thank you, culinary gods) has remained unchanged over the years and is still one of New York’s best shopping areas for Italian food. Interestingly, one of the great stores on Arthur Ave for Italian food stuffs is a Jewish Shop (marked with a beautiful mosaic of a Star of David) called Teitl Brothers which has been there since 1915. Arthur Avenue butcher shops (with rabbits, whole lambs and piglets hanging in the windows) always fascinated little HG when HG’s Mom made one of her infrequent visits to the Avenue (she fancied the bread and pignolia cookies found there). The only other cultural interchange recalled by HG was HG’s Father swapping his home made cherry brandy (Vishniak) for a neighbor’s home made red wine. Belmont has remained an Italian (and newly Albanian neighborhood), proud of its ethnicity, culture and cuisine. Every weekend, nostalgic Italians from the suburbs (as well as every type of New Yorker and suburbanite) visit Belmont and Arthur Avenue to get a taste of what The Bronx used to be. And, on Arthur Avenue that taste is redolent of olive oil, tomatoes and garlic.
