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Another one bites the dust.
Brooklyn Heights' most elegant, friendly supermarket has shut its doors - the D'Agostino's on the corner of Henry Street and Love Lane. Housed in, well, a house of sorts, the Heights' D'Ag was always an oasis of clean and calm in comparison to its local brethren - the nasty Henry Street Gristedes and Montague Street Key Foods to be exact.
Now, it looks like fine food shopping will solely be the domain of the Heights outpost of the pricey gourmet market Garden of Eden. But it's no substitute for a good, old-fashioned supermarket.
And, the D'Ag is set to become...Drumroll, please...Yes, you guessed it, another super-sized drug store: CVS. Just what the area needs, with two Duane Reades, a Rite Aid and an Eckerd.
What's your favorite supermarket? Or have you abandoned food shopping altogether in the name of restaurant delivery and/or FreshDirect?
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Good riddance. I can get my rotting fruit and semi-chilled meat elsewhere.
i shop at the union square whole foods. hot women, good food.
A drugstore is also moving in to the recently shuttered Healthy Pleasures on University Place.
WTF is with these chain drugstores on every other block? Has the demand for tweezers and condoms really increased that much over the past 5 years?
i just love dag's b/c of that catchy jingle...
It's Fresh Direct for me, but I still have use the Food Emporium or Gristedes for some items. Too many items, actually.
The big drugstores are insane. Who uses them?
Odd. I'm constantly baffled by how stores close on Montague Street and nearby areas in Brooklyn Heights. That D'Ag had the worst location on earth for anything. But it always seemed quite busy.
Regarding the chain drugstores, I think it is the same real estate/investment mentality of the Riese Restaurant folks. The acquire property and then place their chain stores in the buildings while they bide time--fix things up, pay off debts, etc...--and then when the time is right they flip the property and continue the cycle.
I head over to the Key Foods in Park Slope on Fifth ave to get my groceries, because they are a.) clean (no health code violations!) b.) have the best music in the store c.) will let you use the bathroom when you need to d.) reasonably priced and e.)they have a parking lot, making it really easy to get groceries if you have a car.
for more on the drugstores, you should read this ny mag article on duane reade. quite interesting, really.
Fresh Direct for me. We live in C. Gardens, and the Met Food closes at 6pm (not really but it seems like it), and isn't really that close, and the Key Food is just plain gross (and also rarely open). Sometimes I make car trips to a Whole Foods, but Fresh Direct has the best offerings of food possible "nearby". Plus, I hate driving.
Speaking of the drugstores, though, I'm never sure what they carry. When you really need something, they seem out of it. They always carry those crappy toys like plastic parachute guys too. I think they make all of their money off of the pharma part, and the rest is filler, like at the porno shops, but instead of having the filler be PG-13 videos, the filler is cottonballs and toothpaste.
honestly, i absolutely love the C-town on 9th street in park slope. it's clean, the people are helpful, the prices are great, and they deliver for $2.
Why does the greatest city in the world have the worst grocery stores?! Aside from the gormets, is all filth and squalor all the time. I still haven't found funk-free dairy in north brooklyn...
When is Trader Joe's going to open an outpost somewhere in the five boroughs?? Heck, I'd even take a ferry to go there...
Another realization that there are the yuppy new yorkers that shop for "quality" and "fresh" produce, and the New Yorkers that shop for Kraft's mac & cheese and Edy's ice cream dinners.
It seems that the drugstores aim to become the one-stop-shops, with random offerings like easter candies, ugly dolls, magazines, drugs, toiletries, Swifters, eggs, milk. It's basic enough I suppose.
Of course I shop at Garden of Eden, and avoid Whole Foods as a useless act to prevent the death of the small chain stores.
The Park Slope C-Town is surprisingly nice--for a C-Town. I avoided it for ages because I'd been to one or two other C-Towns and they were so ghetto and depressing. Anyway, the PS CT has much better prices than the stupid D'Ag on 7th--which is often more expensive than a Manhattan D'Ag.
It's too bad that those are the main options (not involving driving, traveling several stops on the subway--I was also semi-impressed by the huge grocery store in Borough Park off the F stop--but come on!).
I guess real estate is too precious to have decent grocery store options in the city--it really sucks that most grocery shopping in the city involves compromise or expense.
I'm a former NY'er who now lives near Allentown, PA. you havent shopped until you've been to Wegmans. it's a foodgasm.
they're all over Rochester, should make their way near the city soon, y'all need it.
happy shopping.
About a year and a half ago, a fantastic little Key Food opened in the Slope, on Flatbush. The produce is always fresh, the prices are decent, and they have some interesting things in the frozen section that I haven't seen in most other Brooklyn supermarkets.
But the best part? They don't have a sign in front of the Flatbush entrance (or if they do, it's a recent development). You wouldn't know it was a Key Food if they didn't print it on the receipt. It's all de-branded, like a supermarket out of a William Gibson novel, which is kind of refreshing.
That is b/c there is nothing else to do Upstate (I lived there for three years while attending graduate school) and in Allentown but go to the supermarket.
'cept mud-hoggin'.
here here on Wegmans.
My heart is still breaking over the D'Ag. Gristede's is a nightmare, and Garden of Eden is obscenely overpriced.
It feels like a bad dream...
You can't talk grocery stores without mentioning Wegmans... the only thing upstate can really be proud of... but there's no chance they'll come this way.
jess, that key foods has been there for many years, they just recently remodeled (actually the remodeling has been going on for about 2 years now and they've retiled it twice in that time). i think they just haven't put their new sign up yet.
and be careful, their prices can be terrible. for example, a half gallon of organic milk which should never exceed $4 varies in price from $3.80-$5 for the same carton at the same time. that's just one example... they have very shadey pricing practices so pay attention when your stuff gets rung up.
the met food a block away on vanderbilt and park has better prices and they are highly rated for cleanliness.
btw, i think it's prospect heights once you cross flatbush.
the reason you don't go to whole foods (esp. in union square) is because they're directly competing with the green markets, where you buy directly from actual farmers (omg! i just yesterday read about that in the times!).
i heard that trader joe's was at some point several years ago scouting out a location in williamsburg, on the waterfront -- the ground floor of the giant white loft building at n.3rd. -- but they didn't think there'd be enough traffic to share the fresh/natural/organic/crunchy market with the more L-train-convenient Topps. this was several years before rezoning was considered highly likely, and too bad since Topps is shit.
Trader Joe's will be moving into Union Square soon.
Darn - I Guess Brooklyn Heightsers finally killed D'Ag with their adiction to FreshDirect. Very sad: I will now have to resort to what I still call Smelly Key Foods (on account of their roasted chickens stinking the whole place out before they renovated a few years back).
What with this, and Walden Books being replaced by yet another realtor, Montague Salon being replaced by a Fish's Eddy, a local coffee shop being replaced by a 1-800-mattress showroom, and one of the laundromats turning into a joint that makes flower arrangements made out of little cut-out pieces of cantaloup (really!), there are less and less places serving the local community, and more and more for the tourists!
TJ's was also considering a location in Prospect Hts-ish in one of those spanky new apartment buildings around Pacific/Dean btwn. 6th/Sterling. I don't think they could get the sq. footage/parking availability/rent deal combo to keep the price-levels they aim for.
I'm always jealous of the produce/selection/prices at Meijer when I'm visiting relatives. It's the only place worth missing in Ohio though.
You guys make me feel so down-market. I'm a Pathmark shopper, have been for years and will be until I die.
Wegman's is pretty close by, in Woodbridge NJ. I've been there a few times in the past couple months and it is truly amazing.
Its a huge, regular, CLEAN supermarket with cheap prices and also a full blown gourmet and organic store. Also a fast food/cafeteria style restaurant.
If you have access to a car, its worth the gas & tolls to get there.
I shop at Atlantic Fruit and Veg (aka New Green Pea, according to Zagat's) for produce, Sahadi (only early mornings), Fresh Direct, and Key Food at Atlantic/Clinton (for ice cream, paper products, and other staples and emergency items).
Still looking for a place closer than Bay Ridge to get Asian groceries.
Cascas--Since when do tourists buy real estate and mattresses?
I was shocked that the Dag closed. Everyone in the neighborhood went there, everyone knew where it was, granted it was an odd locations, but that didn't seem to be stopping people.
Guess it is Fresh Direct from now on. The Gristedes on Henry is truly the ninth circle of hell, given that it has the trifecta: crappy food (and selection), dirty aisles, and nasty people. I have noticed the Key Food has improved in the time we've been in BH.
I have also experienced a Wegmans during my travels upstate. It has a bothersome Wel-Mart vibe, but the food is great and to the average NYCer the aisles look wide enough to land a 747 on.
Cascas - I agree that the selection of stores on Montague is abysmal and getting worse (though I like the Fish's Eddy, I have to admit) I don't think it's a tourist trade. Blame it on overinflated real estate market, where only the larger operations (like CVS, Starbucks, etc) or the realtors themselves (I think there are **four** on Montague now, and it's not that long!) can afford to pay the rent.
About 8-9 years ago Norman Mailer wrote an op-ed piece in the Times (?) lamenting that the Promenade Restaurant, which was bascially a coffee shop, had morphed into Heights Cafe, an upscale joint. He complained that if current trends continued there would be no place where you could cut out to in your neighborhood for a burger or a good, cheap breakfast. At the time, many people thought, as many people do, that Norman was nuts. Turns out, once again, he was right.
Another Brooklyn Heights resident checking in here. I was amazed and saddened to find that D'ag was closing as it was an alternative to the other stores in the area: classier than the nasty Gristede's and Key Food, but not as pricey as Garden of Eden. But now it's being replaced by a CVS, when we have a multitude of other drugstores in the area?
A friend and neighbor of mine told me that rents are so high on Montague Street that independent stores and restaurants just can't survive there. The reason most of the restaurants on Montague suck (with their overpriced, mediocre food) is because they're not tenants; they own the building the restaurant is in and aren't subject to skyrocketing rents. How else do you think the craptacular Rock N Roll Diner (where I once saw a mouse run across a light fixture right over my table) survives? Do you ever see people eating there? And just last night I noticed that I will no longer be able to enjoy the excellent food and lovely ambiance of Thai 101/Thai Montague.. they had a crudely-lettered sign in their window that said "Sorry we closed." In the three years that I've been in the Heights, that location has killed three or four separate restaurant endeavors.
It sucks, but it's my neighborhood. I still have Iron Chef House on Henry for my sushi fix, Hot Bagels & Deli for my breakfast to go, and The Greens for excellent veggie food delivery.
"friendly?"??
the henry st d'ag was a lot of things, but friendly was not one of them.
>>Cascas--Since when do tourists buy real estate
>>and mattresses?
OK Tim N. - you go me there. But still not exactly the kind of place you need around the corner for everyday purchases. If I want a mattress - I'll dial for one like the ad says - don't need to go the showroom!
I'm even more depressed now that I know Thai 101 is closed!
I shop at Whole Foods in Union Square, the Greenmarket and Garden of Eden for specialty items you can't always get at Whole Foods.
D'Ag, Food Emporium and others of that ilk are thankfully going away.
I can't stand it, I can't stand it. We trudged from Boerum Hill to D'Ag every weekend. We were away and just discovered the horrible truth. I loved every square inch of that store. And the Murray's turkeys at Xmas. And the inexpensive organic yams. I've been shopping there for over 20 years. Bah humbug, CVS,
I also am so upset I can't tell you about Dagostino's closing. I loved that store - it was like supermarket heaven. I cannot go to Gristedes with the stinky smell and the mean cashiers and Key Food isn't much better. Some things are a bargain and then other things are more expensive than other places. Bummer