Little Italy

For those of you who do not know New York City here is a little backround information. Downtown New York always had a section called Little Italy. This was an area on the north side of Canal Street opposite Chinatown. The area was filled with Italian restaurants, pastry shops, gift shops and other Italian connected stores.

Unfortunately with the expansion of Chinatown Little Italy all but disappeared. Now there are a few restaurants that remained to remind the nostalgics that this is where Little Italy once existed.

But no fear. There is a small area high in the Bronx centered around Arthur Avenu and 187 street where Little Italy lives and breathes. I was there on Friday with some European friends. This is a very lovely area. A few blocks large but filled with restaurants, pastry shops, bakeries, butcher shops and other Italian related businesses.

One can not go there hungry because everything look so appetizing. The bakeries with freshly baked breads that crunch just by looking at them. The pastry shops with their beautiful pastries: cannolis, tortonis, spumonis. This is as far as my Italian goes. But they look good.

We had lunch in a lovely small and naturally Italian restaurant where there were white tableclothes and napkins. Oh, the food was very good. I don't know about my friends because they have a more educated pallate then me, but I did enjoy lunch very much. I don't want to sound like a food critic so I will not list what we ate but I liked it.

The best time to go there is during the week because the place is empty. On weekends it really fills up. But during the week only the seniors, unemployed and tourists visit. We fell into these categories, all three.