Arthur Avenue: The Best Thing to Do in New York During the World Cup

If you're coming to New York for the World Cup, you already know about Times Square, Central Park, and the Brooklyn Bridge. Here's what most visitors miss entirely — and what the people who live here actually do on a Saturday.

Rainbow cookies are an Italian-American classic that you still find in NYC pastry shops

Arthur Avenue is a 6-block stretch in the Bronx where the Italian American food shops that built this city in the early twentieth century never disappeared. The bakeries still bake the same bread they baked in 1918. The butchers still break down whole animals in-house. The pasta shop still cuts your fettuccine to order. The pastry shop fills your cannoli in front of you, because a pre-filled cannoli is an insult to the shell.

It is twenty minutes from MetLife Stadium by car and sixteen minutes from Grand Central Station on Metro-North. It costs nothing to walk around, and the eating is extraordinary.

What you'll find

The neighborhood runs along Arthur Avenue and 187th Street in the Belmont section of the Bronx. Start at the Arthur Avenue Retail Market at 2344 Arthur Avenue — an indoor covered market opened in 1940 by Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, where you'll find butchers, pasta makers, cheese vendors, a cigar roller, and a craft beer bar all under one roof.

From there, walk the two blocks in either direction. Biancardi's for aged meat and house-made pancetta. Calabria Pork Store for soppressata hanging from the ceiling — somewhere between 7,000 and 12,000 pounds of it on any given day. Madonia Brothers for bread and cannoli filled to order. Cosenza's Fish Market, where they sometimes shuck oysters on the sidewalk. Borgatti's on Hughes Avenue for fresh pasta cut to order, made the same way since 1935.

For lunch, Mario's Restaurant has been open since 1919. Order the off-the-menu pizza. It is not on the menu. Ask for it anyway.

Getting there

From MetLife Stadium: take the NJ Transit bus to Port Authority in Midtown, then Metro North's Harlem Line from Grand Central to Fordham Station. Total travel time around 45 minutes. Alternatively, a car service from the stadium area takes about 25 minutes with normal traffic.

From Midtown Manhattan: Metro-North Harlem Line from Grand Central to Fordham Station. Sixteen minutes. The train runs frequently on weekends.

Parking: The municipal lot at 2356 Hoffman Street is directly across from the Retail Market. Inexpensive and central.

Come with a guide

If you want the full story — what every shop is, where it came from, what to order and why — our Saturday Shopping and Tasting Tour takes small groups through the neighborhood with guides who know it from the inside out. The tour ends with lunch at Mario's. $95 per person, Saturdays at 11am, 14 spots only. Or come for the new Afternoon Aperitivo Tour, which starts at 3pm and includes wine at Mario's secret upstairs bar.

Private tours are available Tuesday through Saturday for groups of 8 or more — ideal for a group of friends who've come to New York together for the matches. [Book a private tour here.]

The Bronx Fan Zone

Arthur Avenue sits in the Bronx, which has an official World Cup Fan Zone as part of the New York host city program. If you're spending time in the borough for the tournament, the neighborhood is the obvious place to eat.

The shops are open Tuesday through Saturday. Most close between 4 and 5 pm. Restaurants, of course, are open much later. Most shops are closed on Sundays — this is a neighborhood that still keeps the old hours, which is part of what makes it worth visiting.