Locals lead exploration of Bronx’s Little Italy
Big Apple Greeter matches volunteers with tourists curious about the city
BRONX, N.Y.— Big Apple Greeter Dan Abatelli wants to meet at Grand Central Terminal outside the Oyster Bar & Restaurant, not because he’s hungry before our Bronx food crawl but because he wants to show off the secret “Whispering Gallery” nearby.
When two people stand at diagonal arches in the unmarked archway and whisper to the wall, they can hear each other’s voices in an acoustical oddity that attracts a steady stream of people in the know.
Abatelli, a retired teacher, is a volunteer Big Apple Greeter whose job is to promote the city as “friendly, inviting and manageable.”
Greeters have shown more than 150,000 visitors around on free, unscripted walks in all five New York boroughs since the not-for-profit organization started in 1992.
“We don’t call them tours,” Abatelli stresses. “They’re neighbourhood walks or neighbourhood explorations.”
Tourists go online and register when they’re coming and indicate what they’d like to see and do. The program’s 300 volunteers choose the explorations that suit their schedules and interests. Not everybody will get a match.
Our afternoon starts with a subway trip from Manhattan to the Bronx. The New York Times put the South Bronx 51st on its list of 52 global hot spots to explore this year.
We’re going to Arthur Ave., an Italian enclave in the Belmont neighbourhood that’s considered “more Italian than Little Italy.” (That’s a dig at Manhattan’s waning Little Italy.)
You can’t just step off the subway and start eating pizza, Abatelli warns. It’s a 15-minute walk from the Fordham Rd. subway stop to Arthur Ave., faster if you take the bus but then you might miss the street hustlers playing three-card monte.
We’re good and hungry so we head straight to Full Moon Pizza for thincrust slices and garlic knots.
Abatelli declares this 41-year-old “tried and true” institution “even better than the last time I remember.” Like many New Yorkers, he swears it’s the city’s excellent tap water that is the key ingredient in its exceptional pizza dough.
I’m taken with the garlic knots, small, tight coils brushed with oil, parmesan and garlic.
It’s so Italian around here that the Belmont branch of the New York Public Library houses the Enrico Fermi Cultural Center. We wander in and find a seating area with benches that resembles a European plaza, Italian men playing cards and Italian women sitting and chatting.
“We like to think of ourselves as the living room of the neighbourhood,” says the library’s Chelsey Masterson.
Big Apple Greeter explorations last two to four hours, so Abatelli takes us to more of his favourite Arthur Ave. spots. The Arthur Avenue Retail Market for cannolis. Calandra Cheese for a goodly array of samples.
At Egidio Pastry Shop we drink coffee, eat sfogliatelle and take Abatelli’s “New York City Test for Visitors.” We especially like the 20th and final, conversation-provoking question: “Donald Trump was born a) with a silver spoon b) in Trump Tower c) in Queens d) prematurely.”
It makes perfect sense, to me, to end our Arthur Ave. exploration with Albanian food. That’s right — there’s an Albanian influx to the Bronx.
We head to Tony & Tina’s Pizzeria, ignore the pizza and get Albanian burek — a baked, filled pastry — instead. The one filled with sweet pumpkin purée is outstanding.
Abatelli takes burek home for his wife, as thrilled as we are to have found a delicious new take on the Bronx. Jennifer Bain was partially hosted by TravMedia’s International Media Marketplace (IMM) NYC, which didn’t review or approve this story.