There Goes The Neighborhood

Rents are getting too high in my neighborhood for businesses to continue operating. Just over the past six months, three take out places have closed including Chicken Fair which had really good rotisserie chicken, Rice Bowl, an Eddie Bauer, a dry cleaner, a Chinese restaurant, an EMS store, a wine store, a horridly ostentatious antique furniture store, a cell phone store, a pizza place and a deli over by the climbing wall at 62nd and Broadway. Longtime residents Lincoln Stationers and the West 63rd Street Steakhouse are also long gone. Iridium, the jazz club closed a couple years ago, and it was supposed to become a branch of P.J. Clarke's, but the sign for P.J.'s has disappeared, so who knows what that space will be.

The latest casualty in the commercial real estate war is my favorite Korean deli. It was at 182 Amsterdam Avenue at the corner of 69th & Amsterdam. Actually, it looks like the tenants on the whole block which included that antique store, and the wine store as well as Mama's Famous diner and a Chinese take out place are going to be gone as of today. Only the Citibank and the Meskerem Ethiopian restaurant are sticking it out. But I'm guessing they'll be gone too because I think the entire block is being redeveloped. Anyhow, the Korean deli was closed for a little bit a couple years ago for renovation where they got rid of that nasty hot/cold food buffet bar. Those things are gross. Store owners leave the lunch food in the hot/cold trays until dinnertime, by which time the whole buffet has become a deadly hot 'n' cold Petri dish of romping pathogens.

For 6 years, I bought milk, those sweet and chewy Korean rice cakes with red bean filling, Vitamin water, the occasional six pack of beer, Haagen-Daaz cartons, and all sorts of assorted produce at this store. I really liked this store because they really had a good selection of produce, including lots of herbs, that was always really fresh, and it was the closest place to me where I could get Kimchi. The store was clean and was practically a full grocery store. I'll be sad to see it go.

Right now, they're having a "Buy One, Get One Free" promotion on every grocery item in the store. So I stocked up on flour, sugar, kosher salt, yummy De Cecco pasta and olive oil. Actually the olive oil I got was some bottles of really nice olive oil including a couple of bottles of Oliviers & Co olive oil. Like most serious cooks, I buy a ton of olive oil. You'd think I bathed in it judging by the amount I buy. But I don't buy really expensive olive a lot of the time. So it's always nice to get a deal for really good oil.

It's really sad that neighborhood businesses have such a tough time surviving in this city. I'm going to miss all the little stores and restaurants in my neighborhood.