Local is the operative word at Tarrytown Local, a hybrid grocery, bakery and restaurant, which opened Oct. 1 in Tarrytown.
Everything from the plates the food is served on — shout out to Connor McGinn's handmade ceramics — to the pantry items carefully curated on the shelves, to the ingredients used in the restaurant's menu, are from area producers, many of which are small producers.
What greets you first is a colorful display of fruits and veggies with shelving on the left side and refrigerated, and freezer sections to the right. The 25-seat restaurant, which includes an eight-seat bar that looks into the bakery with a small view inside the kitchen, is in the back.
What you can expect in the grocery
Shoppers will find an array of oils, vinegars, spices, mustard, beans, rice, coffee and tea alongside refrigerated meats such as those from Dutchess farm Harlem Valley Homestead (i.e. beef burger patties, hot dogs, skirt steak), Cabbage Hill Collective's ground lamb and pork, Canaan, New York's Yundwell pasture-raised chicken breasts and country style ribs and pork bratwurst links from Terra Ridge Farm in New Paltz.
Among some of the producers locals may recognize are West Nyack's Birdie's Batch, Tarrytown's Fly Honey Farms, Valatie NY-based Hudson Valley Vinegar and the aforementioned The Farm at Cabbage Hill in Mount Kisco,
Beverages, including beer and wine, also get the local touch with offerings sourced from the Hudson Valley.
All items come from companies aligned with the owner's values and mission of personal, planetary and community health. As it reads on their website: "Tarrytown Local is run by humans who are (maybe) a little too obsessed with food systems, sourcing, and flavor."
Every item in the grocery is carefully labeled for shoppers' education and transparency including signage that reads "Eat Good, Eat Local!" with bullet points explaining how they source directly from farms and producers, use nearly all the food they cook from what's in the grocery (meaning nothing goes to waste), never use single-use plastic (i.e. theirs is compostable) and that their baker, Kat Poulin, only uses flour from local grains. She also grinds everything in-house on an old Austrian stone mill (a story in itself).
The new spot is the brainchild of co-owner/operator Steve Wazny and Fox Schanzer, co-owner and chef. The two met a few years ago while working as cooks in a New York Kitchen (Wazny is a former lawyer turned line cook; Schanzer has spent over a decade cooking in farm-to-table restaurants and fine dining spots). Both were interested in food supply issues and the plight of small producers, but the discussion got more intense when Wazny, an entrepreneur at heart, started looking into how to convert Brooklyn bodegas into places that sourced from local farms.
When Schanzer, who was acting as an informal consultant, suggested the idea could work better in Westchester, Wazny re-thought the concept, which became bigger and more ambitious in the year and a half since they ultimately made the decision to partner.
"Some people may roll their eyes when you tell them you found a great 25-year-old chef to partner with and you're hiring his girlfriend too [that would be Poulin], but they haven't met this 25-year-old chef and don't know who Katrina is," he said. "She started a document called breadposal 2025 showcasing the demand for freshly milled grains."
What you can expect at the restaurant
The result is Tarrytown Local with Schanzer overseeing the kitchen, Wazny handling operations (and sometimes acting as sous chef) and Poulin as the baker. Restaurant menu items change weekly as Schanzer cooks with ingredients based on the seasons. He's also using ingredients from the grocery in the kitchen.
Breakfast and lunch have been their starting point with brunch beginning Oct. 11. Dinner kicks off Oct. 15. Overall, diners can expect American lunch classics with "fun sandwiches" (Schanzer's words) and ingredient-forward cooking. Dinner, he said, will be "more elevated and inventive."
Among some of the breakfast and lunch options are a Meadowlands Farm Tomato Salad (with tomatoes Schanzer picked himself with herbs from his garden, roasted peppers, pickled okra flowers and Ardith Mae Farmstead goat cheese); Greenwalk Hatchery Trout (with Great Joy Family Farm black rice and La Sulamina lonza); a breakfast sandwich (with housemade Terra Ridge farm pork sausage, five spoke cheese, Titusville eggs and a spicy sorghum sauce on the side); Golden Beet soup and a pumpkin parfait (with Chaseholm Farm yogurt, granola and sorghum syrup).
Poulin, who left a job as a data analyst after she started baking with fresh-milled flour at home — which she said "changed my life and my health" — is also selling scones, cookies and doughnuts along with two kinds of breads. On the day this reporter was there it was a Renan sourdough and rye sourdough with grains from the Finger Lakes farm, Seneca Grain & Bean. Also offered: spelt scones with a sorghum glaze and black walnuts.
Like Schanzer, she plans to mix things up going forward.
A small place with a big mission
As the place is still in its infancy, the grab-and-go and freezer portions remain a work in progress, with additional items coming. For now you'll find house-made meatballs and soup for takeaway. Eventually there will be salads, sandwiches and more including a twist on Trader Joe's potato latkes, Schanzer said. Poulin also plans to add English muffins and other breads to the freezer section.
In the end, the goal is to meet people where they are in as many ways as they can. For some, said Schanzer, that's grocery shopping and cooking at home. For others, it's eating a meal in the restaurant, buying something from their grab-and-go or picking up from their freezer section.
"We just want them to eat local because local is good in so many ways," he said. "It's delicious, it’s nutritious and it's ecologically sensitive and good for the planet.
"It's also good for our community and our economy."
Added Wazny: "What I think describes us best is that we're a very approachable, comfortable, cozy space that behind the scenes has a very serious mission.
"We really think that in the research we’ve done and our understanding of where American food systems lie, what we’re doing is important. Finding retail outlets for small producers is not only a need for those companies but a need for consumers."
If you go
Address: 57 N. Broadway, Tarrytown, 845-241-8870, tarrytownlocal.com,
Hours: 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday with breakfast and lunch from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. and dinner (which starts Oct. 15) from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday to Saturday. Sunday brunch starts Oct. 11. 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Good to know: The owners are open to requests should you want a food item not available. Also good to know: there's free parking in the back lot.
Fun fact: Wazny and Schanzer wanted to keep the bones of the previous tenant alive and so repurposed the old wood bakery shelves from Tarrytown Pastry Chef which they used for some of the grocery shelving as well as for the tables and bench in front. They also kept the 1950s-skylights. Other wood came from an investor's Chappaqua pine tree that had to be cut down.
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Jeanne Muchnick covers food and dining. Click here for her most recent articles and follow her latest dining adventures on Instagram @jeannemuchnick or via the lohudfood newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: Hybrid grocer, bakery and restaurant opens in Tarrytown | Exclusive
