Of all Manhattan’s neighbourhoods, the Lower East Side is perhaps the one that most reflects the ebb and flow of different communities in New York’s history. A fitting location, then, for a new food market now unrolling, which when complete in 2021 will be the largest in the city. Among the vendors already open at the Market Line are branches of long-standing local favourites, including dim sum specialist Nom Wah, founded a century ago, Ukrainian diner and coffee shop Veselka, and German butcher and beer shop Schaller & Weber. It’s part of an approach that has seen this development win general approval - not a given in the knotty politics of gentrification. The Market Line, which will eventually count more than 100 food, art and music vendors, is the downstairs neighbour of the venerable Essex Market, which relocated last year from its 1940s digs across Delancey Street. The food hall will host a small branch of the Tenement Museum, which tells the stories of immigrant communities in the Lower East Side. It’s a first step for a historic journey to match the culinary one spread out underground here, from fragrant bowls of Vietnamese pho and sticky coconut sweets from Indonesia, to Puerto Rican rice and plantains and corn tortillas in the best Mexican tradition. marketline.nyc
Top left: The food hall at the Market Line.
PHOTOGRAPHS: QUALLS BENSON
Top right: Rolling out Ukranian-style pierogi dumplings at Veselka.