In this collection for T, the writer Reggie Nadelson revisits New York establishments which have outlined cool for many years, from time-honored eating places to unsung dives.
This spring within the East Village, blue and yellow flags flutter within the breeze. The signal of help for Ukraine additionally hangs within the window, alongside loops of kielbasa and loaves of darkish Lithuanian rye bread, on the East Village Meat Market, a butcher store and grocery at 139 Second Avenue. The founder’s title, J. Baczynsky, the “J.” quick for Julian, stays emblazoned on the facade. A Ukrainian immigrant, he opened the shop in 1970 and, within the half-century since, it’s grow to be an anchor of the neighborhood — and, since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, a rallying level for sympathetic New Yorkers of all backgrounds.
At the middle of the store stands its present proprietor, Andrew Ilnicki, who presides over a bunch of largely Ukrainian-speaking butchers and employees. As we chat, buyers stream by: a younger man in an emerald inexperienced bike helmet buys an unlimited horseradish that might double as a weapon; an older Ukrainian man is available in wanting for stuffed cabbage, one of many store’s housemade ready dishes; and a lady in black skinny denims dashes in whereas her automotive idles on the curb to inquire if there can be recent cheese babka the subsequent morning for her to serve at a brunch. There can be.
The East Village has lengthy been residence to immigrants from Eastern Europe, and most of the dishes New Yorkers like me consider as Jewish fare — borscht, potato pancakes, stuffed cabbage — are, after all, simply as a lot Ukrainian or Polish. Customers cease in for these comforts of residence, or not less than of their grandmother’s residence, and for steak and chops, brisket and quick ribs or the jellied pigs’ ft, Hungarian salami and pierogi saved in glass-front show instances and alongside the cabinets of the slender area. Toward the again, a fridge holds hams, cheeses and herring.
“We get our kielbasa and ham from Meat Market,” says Jason Birchard, the third-generation proprietor of Veselka, the Ukrainian restaurant throughout Second Avenue. “It’s the best there is, at a reasonable price.”
“What I love about the Meat Market is that it’s a small-town shop in a big, big city. The food is delicious and the butchers remember you,” says Sally Roy, a movie and tv producer who lived within the East Village for many years. “In what seems like an anonymous city, they treat you like a friend.” Roy lives upstate now, however by no means returns to the realm with out choosing up a metropolis ham, a Meat Market particular with little or no fats.
Personally, I really like the nation ham, a special lower of pork. “The whole process is natural. We use a minimum of salt, and the smoking and baking is done with natural wood,” says Ilnicki of the shop’s meat choices. He spends a lot of his early mornings serving to put together the kielbasa earlier than hanging it within the store’s 50-year-old people who smoke. It’s made with pork and a small quantity of beef. Anything else? Ilnicki smiles, providing solely “secret spices.”
An elegant fellow with intense blue eyes, Ilnicki has spent his complete grownup life on the store. It’s a narrative he loves telling: He arrived in New York in 1980, at age 17, from the town of Jelenia Góra in southwestern Poland. An aunt had invited him and one among his brothers to return stay together with her within the United States, on St. Marks Place. “I had no English,” he says, however there was phrase of a job opening on the Meat Market. “I wanted to be a butcher, though I had no idea how to do it,” he remembers. Baczynsky introduced him in anyway, and inside a yr had proven him all the things he wanted to know.
He and “the boss,” as Ilnicki nonetheless calls him, grew shut, like father and son. Ilnicki chuckles as he recounts recollections of how Baczynsky led a wealthy life, consuming on the metropolis’s nice French eating places and shopping for fits from Bijan, the fabulous Iranian designer. Ilnicki stayed on on the store as he studied accounting and finance at N.Y.U. “In those early days, I just kept going,” Ilnicki says. He married his “200 percent Ukrainian” spouse, as he describes her, Olha, and they raised their two youngsters on East Seventh Street, the identical block as St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church, the place they’re lively members.
In the late ’80s, Baczynsky had a medical scare and his spouse urged him to retire, so he started the method of turning the store over to Ilnicki and one other colleague, Antoni Tychanski. Last yr, Tychanski himself retired, and Baczynsky died on the age of 98. Ilnicki stays, his ardour for the group clear to anybody who passes by.
On the counter towards the doorway of the Meat Market is a jar full of payments — contributions to the humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. “Before the invasion, nobody much talked about Ukraine,” Ilnicki says. “But now it’s everything. People hand me cash and checks, saying, ‘You’ll know what to do with this.’” Indeed, he follows the state of affairs carefully. “We read all the papers and watch the news, of course, but everyone here who has relatives in Ukraine, including my wife, is always on the phone trying to get more information.”
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“Andrew has been critical in our efforts for Ukraine, especially in working with St. George church, getting much needed supplies to Ukraine,” says Birchard. “Canned foods, medical supplies, sleeping bags. He’s a great friend.”
When Ilnicki and I settle in for some grilled kielbasa with horseradish at Veselka, he spots Birchard and calls out to him. The two males have labored at their respective spots on Second Avenue since they had been youngsters. “We even have very distant cousins in common in Ukraine,” Birchard tells me later over the telephone. “He’s very caring. He had tutelage from Mr. Baczynsky, who was a father figure to the whole neighborhood, and he’s carrying his mantle. He learned from the best.”
Later within the week, I run into Tobi Rauscher, a German buddy who lives on St. Marks Place and works for Google. “I went into Meat Market not long ago because I saw their sweets and baked goods on display in the window. I got what in my region are called krapfen and in other places are Berliner — what you call jelly doughnuts,” he says of the treats of his native Bavaria, which the employees at Meat Market confer with by a Ukrainian time period, pampushky. He additionally acquired a pumpernickel loaf. “They were delicious,” he says. “They reminded me of home.”
