ORANGEBURG - The same rustic European village vibe fills the new Old World Market in this Orangetown hamlet, the second location for the gourmet grocery.
The store has launched its soft opening on Wednesday, Sept. 23, as owner Andrew Poma said. The grand opening will come soon, after small details are ironed out.
But Poma figured it was time to open, as the demand was clear by the number of people who stopped or called the originalOld World Market in Nyack daily asking when the new shop would open.
New site sought for years
Old World Market has been located in Nyack, along Route 59 westbound, for around 16 years.
Poma said he'd been eyeing the spot in the Orangetown Shopping Center, bounded by Orangeburg and Dutch Hill roads, for years. He tried to buy it years ago, but
missed out. When he heard last year the space was available, he jumped at the opportunity.
"It's the perfect distance and size for a satellite store," Poma said on Tuesday, Sept. 22, between trips around the store, checking on details.
It took seven months, longer than Poma anticipated, to make the space ready. "There was a lot of infrastructure that needed doing here," he said.
Smaller but still a wide variety of items
Poma said the new store, about half the size of the Nyack flagship, has the same wide variety, from shelf staples to gourmet goods.
The same specialty sections (i.e. produce, bakery, cheese, deli, meat, fish and prepared foods) are there, and so is similar quirky decor, from the rowboat by the fishmonger to hand-crafted wrought iron chandeliers from Turkey.
The bread racks, a decorative kitchen hood and other wood items were crafted by Poma, who said he just likes to do things himself.
"It's the same aesthetic" as the Nyack store, Poma said of the decor.
The Orangeburg store has its own full kitchen, so the well-known prepared items will be made onsite.
The differences between the stores are hard to detect.
Cheesemonger Hakeem Zahidul said the Nyack store offers around 350 different kinds of cheeses, but for the smaller display in Orangeburg, there will be around 250.
That's still plenty of space for obscure offerings, like one of Zahidul's and Poma's favorites called Kokos Coconut, a pastuerized cow's milk cheese from the Netherlands that incorporates coconut milk. Zahidul recommends eating it with a chunk of fresh baguette.
If you go
The new store is where Orange Farm Market had been, at 1A Orangetown Shopping Center.
The store is open 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday.
More: oldworldfoodmarket.com.
Staff writer Jeanne Muchnick contributed to this report.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: New Old World Market opens; see what's in store at Orangeburg shop
