Food Bazaar Supermarket
There's seating among the food stands but another dining room on the mezzanine level.
The food hall is on the western side of the building, meaning it overlooks the Major Deegan Expressway and the Harlem River. More on that soon.
Food Bazaar also has a small food hall in its Long Island City location, and is preparing one in the new Linden Boulevard location. I suspect there may also be something similar in progress at the Hempstead store.
NoodleCraft is the one vendor that's not up and running yet. You can see the entrance/exit to the mall and parking garage to the right of Rokstar below.
I was here at lunch time on a Wednesday. I don't know if there are certain times it gets busy or if this was typical traffic. They're open for lunch and dinner daily.
As you can see, the design of the food hall integrates nicely with the design of the supermarket here.
The draft beer bar in the back corner is next to the stairs to the mezzanine...
The design, as I've come to expect from Food Bazaar, is pretty spectacular. These cut-metal pieces, backlit by a small bulb, are built into all of the support columns here in the food hall. The attention to detail is incredible.
You can see the Boogie Down branding is also up here in the front, and on the other side of these large windows is the main supermarket.
Heading upstairs to the peaceful mezzanine cafe...
Again, some nice attention to detail with the branded Boogie Down railings on either side of the room.
And notice that they actually alternate, with the text outlined on some and cut out on the next.
Let's take a look at the food! Okay, okay -- I know that pile of pork doesn't look particularly beautiful. But it was really delicious. This was the jerk pork from Rice & Peas & Tings, and it was tender, juicy, and just the right amount of spicy. It's braised with a spice rub but then topped with jerk sauce to order.
A side order of dolmades (stuffed grape leaves) from El Greco wasn't great, though. They were fine, but canned, and I was hoping for something better. The best of the things I sampled, though, was the Sicilian Special from A&S Cucina. They're arrancini-style rice balls, but these are filled with risotto made with a bechamel sauce, along with fresh mozzarella. They're breaded and fried, and topped with parmesan and served with creamy vodka sauce.
The interior of these hot and crispy rice balls was the creamiest risotto I've ever tasted, in a rice ball or otherwise. Flavorful and delicious!
You enter to the produce department at the front of the store. The supermarket is rotated 90 degrees, so that the front-end runs along the right side of the store, the produce is at the front, dairy/frozen are at the back, and meat/seafood are on the left side. So the produce department is on the left side of the store if you orient it towards the front-end.
Produce is in a separate room from the rest of the supermarket, separated by the large glass panels you can see above, and the produce room is refrigerated (you can see the refrigeration units on the ceiling). Seafood and meat are up next on the back wall.
As with most Food Bazaars, great attention is paid to the decor. As you can see, it's deluxe and, incidentally, built in-house by Food Bazaar's own design team.
I haven't seen any interior pictures of the Toys R Us that was once here, so I don't know exactly how much Food Bazaar did, but I have to assume everything (except perhaps for the lighting) is brand-new here.
The large butcher counter is in the back-right corner of the store.
This store is large, but the emphasis is on the perimeter. So some of the stores they took over from Stop & Shop -- where the emphasis was on the grocery aisles -- feel too large (like Piscataway) although they're smaller than this one.
Several international aisles, of course the main event in center-store here, are at the middle of the store.
In newer Food Bazaars, meat is moved near produce and dairy is on the back wall.
Beer is in the last grocery aisle, with frozen and dairy beyond it.
And the frozen foods aisle is a spectacle too, with sweeping arches of pallets hanging over the frozen and dairy aisles.
Kombucha, juices, and organic/vegetarian/vegan items are in this back corner, with dairy lining both sides of the last aisle. The milk, which would typically be in this location, is in the front corner at the front of the dairy aisle.
Incidentally, this store is on the fourth floor. I don't know what the receiving situation is like, but it must be quite the feat to keep this large (and high-volume) store stocked up that high. But the Bronx Terminal Market also has a BJ's and a Target, so they've figured out the logistics.
Deli and bakery are in the front corner next to milk. The hot food section here is minimal, of course, because the main attraction for prepared foods is the food hall.
And a look across the front-end...
Opened: January 2020
Welcome back to the Bronx Terminal Market! I first visited in 2020, to check out the new Food Bazaar occupying 83,000 square feet of a former Toys R Us and Babies R Us. (See that post here.) I've also posted the LIDL at the Bronx Terminal Market, which opened last fall. Now we're back to check in on the Food Bazaar, as they've (finally) opened the Boogie Down Food Hall attached to the supermarket.
The Boogie Down Food Hall was originally supposed to open just a few months after the supermarket, but the supermarket opened in... January 2020. Needless to say, the spring of 2020 wasn't a great time to be working on a large dine-in establishment, and so construction stalled. Although Food Bazaar opened lots of stores in the years following this, they took a few years to get back on track with building out the food hall. It finally opened last March.
The food hall is beyond the front-end of the supermarket, and accessible both from inside the Food Bazaar and from the outside. It's set up in the style so popular these days of multiple vendors in small stands with seating around them. Like the supermarket, the food hall is industrial-modern in design and rather extensive. Let's have a look.
The selection of food vendors is extensive, too. Here's the list as of my visit last week:
Owner: Spencer An
Previous Tenants: Toys R Us / Babies R Us
Cooperative: none
Location: 610 Exterior St, Bronx, NY
Photographed: August 6, 2025
The Food Hall
- Nana's a Vegan: vegan soul food
- Juici Patties: Jamaican patties
- Rice & Peas & Tings: Jamaican jerk
- A&S Cucina: Italian deli
- Taco Mix: Mexican
- El Greco: Greek
- Empanadas RD: empanadas and snack food
- Teriyaki Go: teriyaki and sushi
- Bronx Burger Co.: burgers
- Bubble Tea 101: bubble tea and other beverages
- NoodleCraft: noodles, not yet open
- Rokstar Chicken: a Korean fried chicken chain with locations in other Food Bazaars
- Food Bazaar Draft Beer Bar: the only vendor actually owned by Food Bazaar, as far as I can tell, with beer on tap and bar food, such as pretzels and sandwiches
Food Bazaar has become more comfortable with in-store food service lately, something that wasn't in their stores until fairly recently (beyond a rotisserie chicken and some simple hot foods). In Red Hook, Brooklyn, they've turned Fairway's famous waterfront cafe into a serious destination.
The Food
The Supermarket
Because my original photos of this supermarket were from back in January 2020, I decided to re-photograph the whole store. Let's take a new tour!
This is not a store to miss! Between the already-spectacular supermarket and the brand-new food hall, it's worth a stop if you're in town. Also don't miss the rest of this weekend's posts!
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