RECOMMENDATIONS // Calle Neuve
photography compliments of Cristina Martinez
The New South
Philadelphia's Italian Market goes global
by Heather Shayne Blakeslee
EXCERPT //
When I arrived in South Philadelphia in 2003, 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue were the domain of shops that catered to the Italian-American and Irish communities, including multiple places that sold private school uniforms and communion dresses, or handmade mozzarella (I’m looking at you, Mancuso’s). If you want to understand how South Philadelphia has evolved over the last 20 years, I offer you a real-life image from the crowded shelves of the Italian Market in summer 2024. Fruits and vegetables were piled high, and all kinds of meats were dangling from hooks. At a store selling housewares and hats, lined up next to each other were three ball caps: The first, not surprisingly, featured an Italian flag. Its neighbor sported a Mexican flag. Emblazoned on the third, to bring everyone together—a bright green pot leaf. Ah, Philly.
I laughed again about the three hats on a recent fall Friday. It was 7:45 a.m. and as I was crossing Washington Avenue from my Queen Village neighborhood to head down to the Italian Market to interview chef Cristina Martinez, pot smoke was already wafting in the air. I cut through Jefferson Square Park, where neighbors would be gathering the next day for a park cleanup, and headed down Federal Street so that I could walk up the block to the restaurant and see again the sign that had prompted me to interview Martinez. Stretched across 9th Street, tied on one side from the pole in front of a storefront that houses an immigration lawyer and on the other side of the street a Chinese-run laundromat, is a banner that reads, “Bienvenido a Calle Nueve.” //
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