Alimentari Flaneur’s story begins, as many of the best New York stories do, in chaos—specifically, the uncertain months of the spring of 2020, when the city locked down and the then 26-year-old Soares decided that the moment called for a pop-up produce market. A more permanent space in the basement of Essex Market on the Lower East Side followed in late spring 2021, partly as a way to secure work for his then-girlfriend. “She needed a job when farming season ended,” he says. When that outpost shut down, the world was, effectively, Soare’s freshly shucked oyster. The fourth-generation Balducci could’ve set his sights on opening the city’s next Dean & Deluca, but after a few years of building out his team and growing the business, a gourmet grocer just wasn’t in the cards. The bottega was.
An Intimate Italian Dinner at Alimentari Flaneur’s New Culinary Studio in Harlem
