THENEWYORKER,M AY18, 2020 9
PHOTOGRAPH BY CAROLINE TOMPKINS FOR THE NEW YORKER; ILLUSTRATION BY JOOST SWARTE
1
TABLESFORTWO
A Pivot to Groceries
Among my most treasured possessions
right now is an imposingly large plastic
jug containing five litres of olive oil from
Spain. I got it at Hart’s, a restaurant in
Bed-Stuy. On a recent Sunday, in a misty
rain, I stood in an exceptionally calm
line of people (all masked, some gloved,
all spaced at least six feet apart) waiting
to approach a table just inside the door-
way. Behind it, Hart’s three proprietors,
Nialls Fallon, Leah Campbell, and Nick
Perkins—who also own and operate the
Fly, a few blocks away, and Cervo’s, on
the Lower East Side—were filling bags
and boxes with olive oil; produce, eggs,
and meat (including freshly killed, dry-
brined chickens, ready to be roasted)
from local farms; tinned seafood; and
bottles of wine and liquor.
Since early March, the dining rooms
at Hart’s, the Fly, and Cervo’s have been
closed. They have never offered takeout,
and the team decided that they weren’t
going to start now, both because they
don’t feel that their food would travel
well and because they didn’t want to put
their staff at risk. But what started as a
way to off-load excess inventory became
a full pivot: all three establishments—
and countless others across the city—are
now effectively functioning as contactless
grocery stores, open one day a week to
fulfill orders placed online.
If there’s one thing I’d be happy to
retain when shelter-in-place restrictions
are lifted, it’s the opportunity to buy gro-
ceries from neighborhood restaurants.
Professional chefs excel at knowing not
only how to cook but also, equally im-
portant, what to cook, and where to get
the best ingredients. The day before, I’d
stood in another line, outside Arche-
stratus, an exceptional bookstore and café
in Greenpoint, for what its owner and
chef, Paige Lipari, has dubbed her One-
Stop Contactless Shop of the Highest
Order. From behind a table just inside
the doorway, Lipari passed me a box
laden with a half gallon of grass-fed milk,
a two-pound sack of all-purpose flour,
and a hulking ham hock from Smoking
Goose, a butcher shop in Indiana, all of
which I’d ordered on her Web site sev-
eral days prior. She hoisted, too, a plastic
bag stuffed with bouquets of escarole,
rainbow chard, and fava greens from
Bodhitree Farm, in New Jersey.
For Lipari, transition comes naturally.
Not long after Archestratus opened, in
2015, she began to regularly convert the
store, which served prepared foods and
pastries during the day, into an after-
hours supper club, selling tickets to meals
featuring her family’s Sicilian recipes and
dinners cooked by guest chefs, often on
cookbook tours. Before the pandemic,
she was already stocking a small selection
of dry goods, including Rancho Gordo
beans and Italian pistachio spread, and
with her expanded offerings she is ful-
filling a legacy of sorts: for decades, her
grandparents ran Lipari & Sons Latti-
cini, a shop in Bushwick that sold gro-
ceries in addition to fresh mozzarella.
For safety as much as monetary rea-
sons, Lipari and Fallon, Campbell, and
Perkins laid off all their employees in
March. If business continues apace—
on a recent weekend, Lipari filled two
hundred and thirty orders—they’ll be
able to pay their bills, and to rehire staff
and welcome back diners when it feels
wise to do so. But they all seem very
clear-eyed about how uncertain the fu-
ture remains, and open to the idea of a
new normal.
“To be able to weather other storms
that come our way,” Fallon told me by
phone, restaurants might need to be
“a little more diversified, and not just
dine-in.” He and his partners are finding
gratification in sharing recipes, cooking
advice, and their favorite cost-effective
products with customers. “We’ve always
been in the business of providing for our
community—providing good food, pro-
viding good wine, helping people have
a sense of place,” Perkins said. “In a lot
of ways right now, we’re still doing that.
We just have a different business model.”
Lipari told me, “A lot of people have said
to me, ‘This is better than what I can get
when I normally shop, this flour is the
best flour I’ve ever made bread with.’ So
why not keep going with that?”
—Hannah Goldfield
