{"id":643,"date":"2025-05-09T15:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-09T19:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/?p=643"},"modified":"2025-10-11T13:41:46","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T17:41:46","slug":"brighton-beach-bazaar-where-history-is-stocked-on-every-shelf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/2025\/05\/09\/brighton-beach-bazaar-where-history-is-stocked-on-every-shelf\/","title":{"rendered":"Brighton Beach Bazaar: Where History is Stocked on Every Shelf"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A common supermarket that residents go to at Brighton Beach.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As the sun rises over the aging wooden planks of the Brighton Beach Boardwalk, another bustling day begins. The Q and B trains rumble above the food-scented streets. Classic shashlik and piroshki alongside pickled vegetables of all kinds are on display, ready for the customers out on the streets and inside stores. The supermarkets also offer their easy to reach home-cooked meals. But how will they have home-cooked meals without being at their true home? Coming from various places spanning from Eastern Europe to parts of Asia, such as the Middle East and Russia, these customers aren\u2019t so simple. Their hearts and most importantly, their stomachs, are longing for a taste of their home. Supermarkets such as Tashkent and NetCost preserve their identities and fill these desires.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian supermarkets are such a rare kind out of the others that are found in NYC which are dominated by big chains. While Whole Foods may have a hot bar, Trader Joes has just about every frozen meal you don\u2019t even know you need, and Target is an endless adventure, Brighton Beach has the culture. This culture is what makes up the Melting Pot structure of New York and even America. Finding the right ingredients and foods are more than just the barcodes and money-making. It is about lineage and heritage. We know our city to be polished with its chiseled aisles, of course, filled with all organic and gut-healthy food, microwavable meals that are vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, and even jumbo packs of snacks from Costco, and it’s not wrong to stray away from what we know because it brings us comfort. The community of Brighton Beach does the same: it doesn\u2019t stray away from the deeply rooted dishes and foods that its residents know, find comfort in, and love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tashkent Supermarket: A Beautiful Mess<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

One of Brighton Beach\u2019s well known bazaars is Tashkent Supermarket. When it opened in 2017 at the Brighton Beach location, it offered hot food and packaged goods, and always made it feel like a crazy influencer\/celebrity event even though it’s just an average Saturday or Sunday. The lines for the buffet span across the store and so many languages are encapsulated in the walls. Not only are the languages diverse, but also the age groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Picture this: on a hot summer day, a group of teenagers come from the beach to get their gyro meat loaded with tzatziki and vegetables on pita. They run into their Russian grandparents who are buying chicken plov, katleti (chicken patties), and a tasty Napoleon cake for the upcoming dinner birthday celebration. The teenagers enjoy their fresh warm meal on the beach, and the grandparents prepare the crammed table for the many generations that will come to celebrate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The capital of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, is what the store is named after and celebrates the cuisines of Central Asia. This is a rare find in comparison to the other hot bars of NYC, such as Whole Foods which offers a limited selection of cultural cuisine (a tub of basmati rice and butter chicken) . The flagship store was in Brighton Beach and then branched out to Avenue Z and Kings Highway. However, the food options at any location are limitless because, whether you want to enjoy lagman (hand-pulled noodle stew), manty (steamed dumplings with meat), shashlik (grilled meat made on skewers), or olivye salad, it’s all there and made fresh. Don\u2019t forget the flatbreads and beautiful tarts from the bakery located inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The recipes passed down from each immigrant grandparent or parent echo across Brighton Beach and through these very supermarkets they teach younger generations. For many, food is the last strong tether to a language they may not speak fluently or a homeland they\u2019ve never been able to visit. \u201cWhen my mom comes here, she starts pointing at everything and telling stories,\u201d said Alina Yusupova, a local customer, \u201cAbout how her grandmother made borscht with beef bones, or how they only got chocolate on holidays. This place\u2014it\u2019s time travel.\u201d
As mentioned previously, Tashkent\u2019s popularity has allowed it to branch out. But it has also grown beyond the neighborhood. In 2025, the brand expanded into Manhattan, opening a location in the West Village. The buzz was immediate. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing quite like it downtown, it\u2019s both a taste of home and something entirely new \u201d, wrote Grubb Street. This newest edition to Manhattan’s diverse food array is truly one that many can connect to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While stores, such as Trader Joe’s and Whole Foods, have curated ethnic aisles\/meals, they aren\u2019t they lack authenticity despite the packaging. The options are narrowed down and presented to others as a fusion meal to have here or there (depending on what the person is craving). It’s easy to tell by the taste that they are watered down. Tashkent takes that idea to a whole new level of specificity where people can have true authenticity throughout the entire market. These products aren\u2019t tested by focus groups, they are part of a core of traditions in the household of many cultures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Tashkent Supermarket of Brighton Beach on a quiet day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

NetCost: A Pillar of the Diverse Community<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Contrary to Tashkent’s loud reputation, NetCost is its quiet relative. Although they have more locations than Tashkent, they are more organized and simplistic. NetCost at the Brighton Beach location opened in 2019, a bit later than Tashkent, but much larger and located inside the Russian Theatre (a much cleaner finish), it allows customers to take their time and walk through the aisles. The aisles are stocked with what can seem as strange foods to an American but in reality, it is the comfort food of the former citizens of the Soviet Union. There are jars of pickled vegetables, jams, and dried fish but also cereals like Cheerios and chips like Lays showing the fusion between two worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comfort and nostalgia that shoppers receive from NetCost is just one part of the experience. Krystyna Tiufanova, a former HR manager at the Brighton Beach location, explained how deeply embedded multiculturalism is in the store’s DNA. \u201cNetCost is a diverse place, and it’s important that the people we hire are friendly and comfortable working in a multicultural setting,\u201d she said. Although she now works at the Queens location, the role language and cultural understanding play in hiring is constant throughout the locations. Russian, Ukrainian, and Georgian\u2014all are useful assets when navigating the linguistic terrain of Brighton Beach. Whole Foods employees are hired for their agility and speed as the main priority, contrasting from the empathetic and understanding staff at markets such as Netcost. More importantly, the bilingual employees are seen as assets and not the norm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, a variety of conflict resolution workshops, mentorship opportunities, and training programs are offered meticulously, which help to create \u201can inclusive and respectful work environment.\u201d as Tiufanova says. She describes it as a space where diversity is preserved and loves \u201cthat about the Brighton Beach location. It was very authentic but also didn\u2019t feel as intertwined with the rest of the city.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Food critics and tourists have noticed and appreciated this authenticity. You could spend hours browsing the aisles,\u201d wrote Chris Finn in The Infatuation, \u201cand still walk out unsure of what half of your purchases are\u2014but you know they\u2019ll be good.\u201d YouTube food vlogger Jon Barr described this similar sentiment in his video Eating Soviet Food in New York! saying, \u201cThere\u2019s nowhere else in the city where you can get a hunk of salo- Ukrainian bacon fat- like it\u2019s candy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even NetCost\u2019s social media presence has illustrated this warm and homey community. In a recent Instagram video, employees are shown donating turkeys for Thanksgiving in collaboration with the Brighton Neighborhood Association. This doesn\u2019t take away from the community that is built at big supermarkets, however theirs are huge marketing campaigns that are made logistically, steering away from raw emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Grand Opening of NetCost on a hot summer day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Classic American Supermarkets<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

American supermarkets, like Walmart, a superstore known across America, mainly focus on inventory: restocking what seems like every 5 minutes. Similarly, this is the same pattern that arises at superstores in NYC. Their ideology focuses on efficiency and speed on a national scale, making sure to outsell their competitors. This is what separates NetCost and Tashkent. Their purpose is to keep the history of so many ethnic groups alive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The food at mainstream supermarkets has a main goal of appealing to everyone. This goal is something that Brighton Beach supermarkets take to a whole other level. Each item connects directly to the population and allows them to interact at the same time. Russian babushkas argue about whose recipe is better, other customers help each other find the kielbasa that is the best for the recipes, and this everlasting exchange forms. That kind of interaction doesn\u2019t happen at a Walmart self-checkout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mainstream American supermarkets like Target and Whole Foods operate on scale and sameness. Their goal is to reach goals, not resonate with the stories of the customers. They restock every five minutes, chase quarterly profits, and prioritize supply chain logistics over community memory. Their \u2018ethnic\u2019 aisles are curated by marketers, not the sweet and loving grandmothers who put their souls into preparing food. Whole Foods may be loud, but NetCost and Tashkent are louder. Louder in diversity, louder in heritage, and louder in community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This community that was built over decades might be in danger as rents rise and big brands slowly take the places of local markets. There is no way of knowing for certain that Brighton Beach\u2019s family-owned and immigrant-run markets will always be there, welcoming others who are searching for connections to their homes. But as of now, in our modern city, Brighton Beach stands out with its connections to the past and its flavorful delicacies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Brighton Beach filled with people on a hot summer day.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

More than Just the Food<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Gentrification is unfortunately a term that many people in the city know, and it is something that is slowly creeping into the Brighton Beach neighborhood. Rents are rising, not only for the homes of the people living there but for their favorite markets. Whole Foods, Amazon, Trader Joes, Target, Costco, and BJs (and many more) have so many resources and so much money that they can win this battle in a heartbeat. Generally, they strive for a more efficient shopping experience meaning that they have less to lose. Less to lose in terms of a community that was built around their food. Markets run by immigrants will not only lose money, but they will lose the vibrant cultural community that surrounds them as well as the culinary techniques and knowledge passed down through generations.
On the outside, Brighton Beach supermarkets have this tough exterior, looking intimidating to people who don\u2019t live there and don\u2019t come from Slavic\/European origin. But like a khachapuri, they are flavorful and soft on the inside, and most importantly warm. It’s not about choosing between one store or another, it’s about the shopping experience the customer wants and what they remember from it: organized aisles or ancestral stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Delicious and crispy khachapuri coming straight out the oven.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\nRosabelle Yavorsky with Max Tsigalinsky, Stephen Bogdan, and Chrystal Mallouras.\nAs the sun rises over the aging wooden planks of the Brighton Beach Boardwalk, another bustling day begins. The Q and B trains rumble above the food-scented streets. Classic shashlik and piroshki alongside pickled vegetables of all kinds are on display, ready for the customers out on the streets and inside stores. The supermarkets also offer their easy to reach home-cooked meals . But how will they have home-cooked meals without being at their true home?\nMichael Benediktsson\nBaruch College\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As the sun rises over the aging wooden planks of the Brighton Beach Boardwalk, another bustling day begins. The Q and B trains rumble above the food-scented streets. Classic shashlik and piroshki alongside pickled vegetables of all kinds are on display, ready for the customers out on the streets and inside stores. The supermarkets also […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":644,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"portfolio_post_id":0,"portfolio_citation":"","portfolio_annotation":"","openlab_post_visibility":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7],"class_list":["post-643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-brooklyn"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1460,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions\/1460"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/openlab.macaulay.cuny.edu\/nyfoodatlas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}