The Bronx
Est. circa 1639
In 1947, when 13-year-old Mike Amadeo moved from Puerto Rico to New York City, the Bronx hummed with the sounds of salsa, mambo, and plena. There were scores of music venues, from the Tritons Club to Hunts Point Palace, where Latin jazz star Tito Puente played as a young man. Today, many of the dance halls have closed—but you wouldn’t know it to visit Casa Amadeo, the oldest continuously operating Latin music store in New York City. Founded in 1927 as Almacenes Hernández, the shop was rechristened when Amadeo took it over in 1969. It still operates out of the same space, barely a block away from the elevated 4/5 train. And in 2001, it was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
When I visit in late spring, from the outside, Casa Amadeo appears small. But when I step inside, I need a moment to take in all the CDs, records, guitars, maps, drum sets, and T-shirts. Salsa music plays from a boom box on the counter, where Amadeo tends to a pair of customers.
More than the merchandise here, Amadeo himself is the primary draw. The son of musician Alberto “Titi” Amadeo, Mike spent a decade at Alegre Records, a seminal Latin music label, before taking over the shop. He also composed songs performed by Celia Cruz and El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, including one of their biggest hits, “Que Me Lo Den en Vida” (“Give It to Me While I’m Alive”). It’s a philosophy that Amadeo lives by, and one that reflects the energy of the borough and his place in it: The street outside the store was renamed Miguel Angel “Mike” Amadeo Way in 2014.
Mike Amadeo is an expert on Latin music in the U.S. and Casa Amadeo functions as a de facto museum.
Photos by Alex Lau
Amadeo is a vigorous 91 years old, with thick white hair and a charming, no-nonsense affect. He loves to leaf through books showcasing Latin music history in the United States, and on Fridays, he’s known to pick up a guitar and hold concerts. When we start chatting, he shows me photos of his famous customers. “Hillary Clinton fell in love with me,” he says, eyes twinkling.
Time, I suppose, is on both our minds, albeit for different reasons. I’m in Amadeo’s store to celebrate, because 2025 marks the occasion of New York City’s 400th birthday. Settlers founded the city around 1625, “purchasing” what is now Manhattan from the Indigenous Lenape population—though purchase is hardly the right word, given the diverging ideas about ownership, and the decades that settlers spent expelling Native communities.
I’ve lived in New York for 19 of those 400 years: a comparatively small amount of time on the scale of centuries, perhaps, but a substantial figure for someone in his thirties. I’ve long been fascinated by the city’s past, by the businesses that have made it such a singular place, and how and why they endure. Casa Amadeo is my first stop in a journey that will take me to some of the oldest and most iconic establishments in Queens, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Staten Island, and the Bronx.
If the music shop is any indication, I’m in luck. Shortly before I head out, two customers enter the store to approach Amadeo for a bendición, or a blessing. “Lo que me vayan a dar” (what they might give me), they all then sing, as Amadeo claps, “que me lo den en vida.” Give it to me while I’m alive.
Julius’ was designated a New York City landmark for its role in LGBTQ history.
Photos by Alex Lau
Manhattan
Est. circa 1625
Customers are equally loyal at the original Russ & Daughters, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, one of the oldest “appetizing” stores in the city. Joel Russ started the business after emigrating from what is now Poland, selling herring and dried mushrooms from a pushcart on Orchard Street before opening a shop in 1914. (Russ, who had no sons, added the “& Daughters” to the name after making his three daughters full partners in the business in 1935.) Inside the narrow storefront, black-and-white photos show how the establishment has changed over the years, and shelves are filled to the brim with tinned fish, dried fruit, pistachio halvah, and chocolate-covered jelly grahams.
Like the store itself, the core menu—salmon, herring, caviar, cream cheese—has stayed largely consistent over the years. But when fourth-generation co-owner Josh Russ Tupper, Russ’s great-grandson, tells people he wants to innovate at Russ & Daughters, he is often met with befuddlement: The shop has existed for a century—what needs to change? Customers’ purchasing habits have evolved over the past decades; Tupper says most visitors today buy sandwiches rather than items they can serve back at home. This is part of why Russ & Daughters remains as beloved as it is—it knows how to meet the needs of the moment while also remaining consistent. “Our innovation is indiscernible to our customers,” Tupper says. There are technology updates to implement and bagel production adjustments to be made. The company has started using AI for help interpreting sales data.
Things are a little less cutting-edge two miles away at Julius’, the oldest gay bar in the city. Founded in the mid-19th century as a grocery store in Greenwich Village, the bar retains a patina of its early years—the dim interior, wood walls, the merciful lack of thunka-thunk music. But in one important respect, things are different.
On April 21, 1966, a handful of gay men arrived at the bar to highlight state liquor regulations that effectively prohibited the assembly of gay people. It was three years before the higher-profile Stonewall Uprising, which occurred just a block away. When the men informed the bartender they were gay, he refused to serve them. The resulting publicity surrounding the “Sip-In,” as the incident became known, drew attention to the rules, and, in time, helped lead to Julius’s evolution into a self-identified gay bar. Today, a rainbow flag stretches across the ceiling, and a blue neon sign advertises what it refers to, winkingly, as “Gay Beer.”
On the evening I stop by, Julius’ is celebrating the 59th anniversary, to the day, of the Sip-In. Julius’ is my favorite gay bar in the city—it’s a place where you can actually meet people and get a phone number, as I myself can attest. But what else has contributed to the bar’s longevity? I ask several patrons why they think it has survived all these years. “It’s like our living room,” one man tells me. That his observation is something of a cliché hardly makes it any less true.
As I continue across Manhattan, themes of perseverance continue to reveal themselves. Success requires leaders who care about their local community, says Jake Dell, the fifth-generation owner of Katz’s Deli on the Lower East Side.
Katz’s also owns its space, which gives it added security in a city known for rent spikes. So, for that matter, does Russ & Daughters, as well as Wing on Wo & Co., a porcelain shop that stands today as the oldest continuously operating store in Chinatown. When I go visit, I’m dazzled by the artistry and delicacy of the plates, unsure how to pick out a gift for a friend. Here, then, is another reason why the shop has endured: It still sells excellent products.
In 2024, the James Beard Foundation awarded Sylvia’s an America’s Classics Award, which recognizes restaurants with “timeless appeal.”
Photos by Alex Lau
It’s a lesson I find uptown, too. Located between 126th and 127th Streets on Malcolm X Boulevard, Sylvia’s is a Harlem mainstay known for its rich, flavorful soul food: candied yams, pork chops, catfish, fried chicken.
When we sit down in the dining room, second-generation executive Crizette Woods says her mother, Sylvia Woods, opened the business in 1962 thanks to a loan from her own mother, who mortgaged her farm to help realize Sylvia’s dream; today, Sylvia’s is the oldest Black-owned restaurant in the city. “I was almost born here because my mom didn’t want to go to the hospital when she was in labor,” Woods tells me. “I say I share the title of ‘baby’ with the restaurant.”
Though younger than many of the businesses I’ve visited, Sylvia’s stands as a model for other entrepreneurs, particularly those who have come up against the kind of barriers Black New Yorkers have faced over the course of the city’s history. Woods says that her mother imagined the restaurant as a place where everyone felt comfortable, from construction workers to children to musicians performing at the Apollo, Harlem’s oldest functioning theater, just 10 minutes away on foot.
The ensuing generations of the family have succeeded in carrying that vision into the 21st century. To evolve with the health needs of their most loyal patrons, they’ve reduced the fat and sugar content in their dishes, while also welcoming busloads of visitors from all over the world. There’s also no messing with a good thing: Chicken and waffles was popularized in Harlem in the 1930s, and at Sylvia’s, the dish is as good as ever. I drizzle my overflowing plate with syrup, the combination a perfect marriage of salty and sweet.
In the lobby I spot an older woman approaching a framed photo of the eponymous Sylvia, who died in 2012. The woman touches her fingers to her lips and then presses them to the photo.
“Hi, mama,” she says. “We miss you.”
Some ice-cream dishes at Eddie’s Sweet Shop are original, as are the flavors and ceiling inside the space.
Photos by Alex Lau
Queens
Est. 1683
Of all the boroughs, Queens is the largest, so it’s no surprise that it takes me more than an hour to get from my apartment in Brooklyn to Eddie’s Sweet Shop, which turns 100 this year and is the oldest operating ice-cream parlor in the city. Owner Vito Citrano tells me the shop’s mantra is “Have ice cream the way your grandparents had ice cream.” The Citrano family took over the shop in 1968 and has been rigorous about maintaining the old-timey feel of the place and ensuring the quality of the ingredients; syrups, whipped cream, toppings, and ice creams are all made by the family on the premises. When I walk inside, I’m drawn to the centerpiece of the shop, a long white marble countertop with a line of stools. Citrano tells me that some of the metal ice-cream dishes date back decades.
When my vanilla sundae with homemade marshmallow sauce arrives, it’s already dripping on the counter. As I eat, I watch an employee behind the counter reach into a vat of maraschino cherries, pluck one out, and place it onto a sundae with the delicacy and precision of a chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Behind him stands an old white refrigerator like something out of a Jimmy Stewart movie; next to it stretches another white marble counter crowded with menus, cones, coffeepots, paper cups, sugar shakers, a cash register—markers of a long-standing business that knows a thing or two about success. To order a milkshake or an egg cream here is to step back in time, I think: to enter a bygone era that is, thanks to a century’s worth of effort, not in fact bygone at all. Eddie’s reminds me just how potent a force nostalgia can be.
Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden, Queens, offers primarily Czech and German beers on draft.
Photos by Alex Lau
Before leaving Queens, I stop by the Bohemian Hall & Beer Garden in Astoria, the oldest beer garden in New York City. Founded in 1910 as a meeting place for Czech immigrants, Bohemian Hall is still owned and managed by the Bohemian Citizens’ Benevolent Society of Astoria, whose aim is to support and share Czech and Slovak culture. For decades the organization did just that, with the beer garden serving as a community space to drink, eat, play chess, and see Czech plays.
But by the 1990s, business had slowed, and the organization took on debt. Faced with the possibility that Bohemian Hall could be auctioned off, local groups banded together to fight for its survival. Those efforts helped turn the business back into the meeting spot it is today—proof of just how essential community investment can be.
I order a lager and carry the overflowing mug to my seat at a picnic table in the sun-filled courtyard. I’m there on a weekday afternoon, and the place is full of families. Kids kick a soccer ball, and strollers are parked among the trees.
At one time, there were 800 beer gardens in the city; today, Bohemian Hall is one of the last of its kind. “You don’t find too many places like this,” a happy drinker tells me.
Viji Devadas (left) opened New Asha with her family. The restaurant is known for its hoppers, bowl-shaped pancakes made from fermented rice flour.
Photos by Alex Lau
Staten Island
Est. 1661
The least populated of the five boroughs, Staten Island is most often a brief stop for visitors riding the Staten Island Ferry to and from Manhattan for a peek at the Statue of Liberty. On the day I arrive, Viji Devadas, co-owner of New Asha restaurant, welcomes me with the cheery hospitality of a beloved aunt. Under the green and yellow awning of the eatery, she motions me inside to the fridge, where I select a fresh passion fruit juice and sit down at a Formica table. Established in 2000, New Asha is relatively young compared to some of the institutions I’ve visited on this quest. But it is one of the oldest Sri Lankan restaurants in a vibrant area known as Little Sri Lanka, which has a population of some 5,000—one of the highest concentrations of Sri Lankans in the country.
Devadas’s husband and her brother, Subhas Ramakrishan, were the ones to conceive of New Asha, inspired by the siblings’ grandparents’ restaurant in Sri Lanka. In Staten Island, visitors have become loyal “because it’s like a home,” Devadas says. “We don’t treat people like customers, we treat them like family. That’s the key.”
Ramakrishan calls me to the kitchen. On a huge griddle he scatters onions, oil, carrots, leeks, and chopped roti, topping it all off with an egg and coconut sauce. This is kottu roti, he tells me, a quintessential Sri Lankan dish. After a few moments, he hands me a steaming plate. The dish is chewy and forward with spice, and as I eat, Ramakrishan nods, smiling.
Home is also a major theme 20 minutes away at Basilio Inn, the oldest operating restaurant on Staten Island, which I visit after saying goodbye to Ramakrishan and Devadas. (It dates back to 1921.) Owner Maurizio Asperti tells me he knows “98 percent of the people that come here.” He waves at a customer walking by. “I knew this woman when she first got married.” When I sit down for pappardelle with fresh tomatoes and goat cheese, a woman gestures at an empty table where a placard with a name on it indicates the next reservation. “They’re always here,” she says. “Seven o’clock.” In a city where people often don’t know their neighbors, I think, it feels good to be known.
Some of the most poular orders at Damascus Bread & Pastry Shop include spinach pie and tahini bread.
Photos by Alex Lau
Brooklyn
Est. 1645
Finally, I explore the borough I call home: Brooklyn. Inside Damascus Bread & Pastry Shop, the mood is cheery. Opened in 1930 in Brooklyn Heights, it is the oldest pita shop in New York City, one of many specialty stores that once lined Atlantic Avenue, a hub for immigrants from Syria and other Arab countries. Sahadi’s, next door, opened in 1948, and Yemen Café, across the street, in 1986. As I wander by the bags of fresh pita and stacked boxes of dates, customers crowd the counter, buying lentil soup, pistachio nougat, and squares of honey-soaked baklava, which I will eventually order to go.
I eat a few bites on the 15-minute walk back to my apartment. As I stroll down the street, traffic grinding by, I consider New York’s greatest gift: proximity. For these past several weeks, I have been traveling all over, sampling the city’s best pastrami, the best beer, the best baklava, all of it brought to life by people with craft and care. It occurs to me that they, more than whatever is flashy and new, are what we’re really celebrating this year, for they are what make New York New York. They make a city a home—for New Yorkers past, present, and for the centuries to come.
