- [Narrator] Let's get this
out of the way right now.
Arthur Avenue, the still-beating heart
of Bronx's Little Italy,
isn't a supermarket.
It's way more than that.
It's an Italian-American mecca
for butcher shops, bakeries,
cheese stores, food markets,
fishmongers, yada, yada,
you get the picture.
It's big.
It's bold.
And it's filled with life-like sculptures
of gangsters and every
variation on the Italian flag.
Folks on the streets say "Ciao"
without the slightest sense of irony.
Sure, tourists flock here,
but there's still a genuine community
that keeps the place from
becoming a theme park.
The only real danger in coming here:
people might just feed you to death.
It's time to get lost in the supermarket.
First things first, the
sheer aroma of chili and pork
drags me off the sidewalk and lures me
into Calabria Pork Store,
a legendary destination
with so many dried sausages,
they have to hang 'em off the ceiling.
- And the first thing that hits you
is this unbelievable porky aroma,
aged, mushroomy aromas,
and chili because
Calabria is a particularly
chili-loving region of Italy.
They even douse their
cheese in chili peppers.
Could I try the Calabrese cheese?
A very generous taste.
You can see there's
definitely a lot of chili
on the outside.
I'm gonna see if it permeates the inside.
And it totally does.
There's basically like
a bit of chili-ish oil
that's running through the entire cheese,
just like infusing it.
It's like a nice heat in
the back of the throat.
It's really, really good.
(playful music)
- [Narrator] After all that
salty, spicy pork and cheese,
there's only one thing to do:
make a beeline for carbs
at a bakery that's famous
for their old-school Italian cookies,
though no surprise here,
their bread also happens to
have chunks of pork inside it.
- I'm gonna go over here
to this wall of biscotti,
and then you also have
cannoli shells here.
You can get your cannoli filled fresh.
Could I get one cannolo?
So she's gonna pull
out one of these shells
and pipe in that ricotta filling.
Can't get much fresher than that.
Delicious.
This shell stays super crispy.
Inside is this like mascarpone
and chocolate chip filling.
Absolutely delicious.
Right over here, we
have tri-color cookies.
Now this is a classic you'll
see in a lot of bodegas
around New York City.
We should try a tri-color cookie.
Three layers of like an almond
paste-infused cake with,
I believe, jam in between,
chocolate on both sides.
Mmmmmm, that is really delicious.
- [Narrator] Built in the 1930s,
Arthur Avenue retail market
still serves the community,
with plenty of FDNY firemen
shopping for groceries,
specialty Italian vegetables
with nicknames I can't say out loud,
and an entire section
of the place devoted to
a small army of cigar rollers.
- We have very tiny birds
of different varieties.
You got your quail,
you got your pheasant,
you got your guinea fowl,
your Cornish hen, your squab.
Sure.
Yeah. I'll see that.
- [Narrator] I'm barely in
the market a few minutes
before David Greco from Mike's Deli,
a long-time fixture of the market,
begins to do what people
on Arthur Avenue do best:
talk up the food they're proud to serve up
to their customers.
- It's cut with a
diamond-shaped crystal cut.
Unlike a lot of places cut
it with a knife or a bandsaw.
- Right.
- Because when you crack the parmigiano--
- That's where you get the texture.
- Right. So, here's a
three to four-year-old
Parmigiano-Reggiano
Rocco.
- Wow.
- It's a nice quality Parmigiano.
- Three to four-year-old?
Like the average Parmigiano is like maybe
two years old, right?
So, this is pretty much twice the age
of the average
Parmigiano-Reggiano you would get
at like a fancy cheese shop.
Even though it's four years old,
it's just as moist as
the average Parmigiano.
It's just like way nuttier,
and like way more umami.
- Cameramen always get
left out guys, so here.
I got trouble and chopped for that action.
(light jazz music)
- Which do you think is your
most distinctive sandwich?
- Here's our Italian-American style.
- [Brunette Woman] Oh my gosh.
- Sobrassada, prosciutto
cotto, mozzarella, capicola,
provolone, lettuce, peppers.
We make it on our homemade
focaccia, which is,
you can see, so light and airy.
It's made from
olive oil.
- It's practically a pillow.
- Now this is the fritter.
- Oh my god, there's a
sandwich coming up, too.
- You gotta taste everything.
You're in Little Italy.
- Okay. You're right.
- What do you prefer, Red or Prosecco?
- Oh my god. It's not even noon.
- You're in Italy.
- So what time is it now?
- In Italy, it's six o'clock.
- Okay. So this works out.
- It's 11:30, we're good.
- Thank you so much, sir.
- Thank you. Welcome to Little Italy.
- Cheers.
- Ciao, ciao.
- [Narrator] As I leave the
market, I spot Cosenza's,
where people eat their clams
raw for breakfast, lunch,
and dinner un-self-consciously.
- Cosenza's is a seafood market,
so literally you're getting
the seafood straight
from the market and ready to eat.
Thank you.
Put my lemon there, homemade
chili-vinegar thing.
Makin' it rain over here.
(light jazz music)
- So we're here at Casa Della Mozzarella.
As you can see, we are here
during the lunch crush.
It's an enormous line.
We're gonna go try to find
some freshly-made mozzarella,
which they make right
in the back over there.
- [Narrator] Now I'm definitely lucky,
getting to glimpse how
owner Orazio Carciotto
makes fresh mozzarella
by basically giving it
the equivalent of a spa treatment,
tossing cubed cheese curds with hot water
and stretching the balls with hands
that are magically heat-resistant.
I've seen the standard size
fresh mozzarella before,
but soon they're stretching
and tying little knots of mozz.
End result: I ate way too many.
Little knotted mozzarella.
Mmmmmmmmmm. You really taste the milk.
And this is only--
It only taste like this
before you refrigerate.
If you chill it, it's
never as good as like
right when it's made.
- And eating way too much
is basically the ending
of anyone's visit to Arthur Avenue.
Between the food you buy now to eat later,
the food you buy for later,
but end up eating now,
and the ingredients you end up
cooking into a massive feast,
Bronx's Little Italy makes
it very, very difficult
not to go overboard,
and that's totally fine with me.
The only real challenge:
eating a cone of gelato, while
carrying everything home.
