Formaggio bites into the Big Apple

NEW YORK -- First it was Cambridge, then Boston's South End. Now the venerable gourmet shop Formaggio Kitchen has opened its first retail outpost here at the Essex Street Market on Manhattan's Lower East Side.

Formaggio Essex Specialty Foods, which opened in early July, occupies a stall measuring about 220 square feet inside the enclosed market, which also features produce and meat stands and a barbershop. The store offers sandwiches, as well as a wide selection of cheeses, meats, spices, and other products familiar to Formaggio's customers in Massachusetts.

``It's just all condensed into one little spot," said Max Shrem, the 22-year-old Long Island native who runs the stall.

Just three weeks after it opened, Formaggio Essex already was attracting loyal Big Apple customers. On a recent hot, dreary Saturday, Julia Collins was making a return trip to load up on cornichons, salami, pate, and other goodies to nosh on. She appreciates the store's practice of telling customers a little bit about what they're buying. As in the Boston area stores, samples are plentiful, and handwritten tags describing a food's origins and tastes are displayed everywhere.

``Everything has an identity and a story," Collins said.

Formaggio already supplies several New York restaurants, and owner Ihsan Gurdal describes the Essex Street space, which is not far from the store's warehouse, as a way to get a feel for retail business in the city. ``We really want to see how it works," he said.

Shrem already believes the stall, packed with hard-to-find specialty foods, is filling a local epicurean void. As new restaurants sprout up throughout the Lower East Side, he sees it as one piece of a neighborhood's evolution.

``It's becoming more of a food place," he said.

Formaggio Essex Specialty Foods, Essex Street Market, 120Essex St., New York.