The Market Line is Open Today at Essex Crossing
It’s grand opening weekend for the Market Line at Essex Crossing. Following a VIP preview last night, the subterranean shopping complex makes a long-awaited public debut this morning.
You can enter the Market Line using a sweeping staircase in the Essex Street Market. If you want to access the space from the street, there’s an entrance at 115 Delancey St. (the southwest corner of Norfolk and Delancey streets). The market will be open from 7 a.m. until 1 a.m. daily. And for opening weekend, there will be live music, DJ’s, a photo booth and tarot card readers.
The Market Line is the centerpiece of the Essex Crossing mega-project. Taken together with the separate, city-managed Essex Street Market, the two facilities will eventually span 150,000 square feet under three buildings (only the first third of the Market Line is opening today).
Delancey Street Associates, the development consortium, recruited a number of well-known Lower East Side/Chinatown businesses to open stalls in the new facility. They include: Doughnut Plant, Nom Wah, Pho Grand, Pickle Guys and Veselka. Another familiar local business, Aqua Best seafood market, has opened an expansive restaurant and seafood counter. Essex Pearl is larger than most operators in the Market Line. It is a full-service restaurant with 48 seats and a raw bar. Fabian von Hauske Valtierra and Jeremiah Stone, owners of the critically acclaimed Contra and Wildair restaurants on Orchard Street, are opening Peoples, a combo wine shop and wine bar. And the team behind Davelle, the Japanese cafe on Suffolk Street, will be opening a sake bar and Izakaya in the Market Line (it won’t be part of the opening day lineup).
What else can you expect? There’s the Grand Delancey, a 200-seat beer hall from a big restaurant group based in Washington, D.C. Not all of the vendors are peddling prepared foods and drinks. There’s Ends Meat, a whole animal butcher based in Industry City; Schaller & Weber, an outpost from the highly regarded Upper East Side German grocery; Tortilleria Nixtamal, a Queens-based vendor making fresh tortillas on-site; Que Chevere, a new business featuring home-style Puerto Rican food; Kuro Obi, a ramen shop with ties to the Ippudo chain; and Slice Joint, a spot from a former chef at Roberta’s. Rounding out the opening day lineup: Ample Hills Ice Cream, Cafe Grumpy, Four Sigmatic, Moon Man, Rebecca’s Cake Pops, Southeast Asian Food Group and Substance Vitality Bar.