The Market Report

Okka Foods Market Owner: unknown Opened:  January 2024 Cooperative:  none Location:  1524 Kings Hwy, Brooklyn, NY Photographed:  February 16, 2024 Welcome to our final special report of the day! I guess you could say I was saving the best for last, because this store is absolutely spectacular. And it packs a lot of selection and services into just about 8,000 square feet of a former Rainbow clothing store. Judging by the name Okka and most of the selections here, I'd bet the bulk of the store is Turkish-focused. This is an incredibly diverse neighborhood, with large Middle Eastern and Eastern European populations. Okka has a little bit of everything, but aside from the international focus, it's just a generally higher-end supermarket. It feels much larger than its size, with a coffee shop (including brewed and bulk coffee) and several rows of pastries in self-serve cases immediately inside the entrance on the left. Produce is front and center, with the registers in ...

This store is a little bit of an oddball. It was originally a Met Foodmarket (probably since it opened in 1986), with a service butcher in a separate storefront under the name Meat Town (even though, to my knowledge, the grocery store sold meat). In 2016, owner Thomas Kaller seemed to have gotten an idea to rebrand the entire operation as a Met Fresh Supermarket , moving the Meat Town sign that used to be over the separate storefront to higher up and centered over the Met Fresh sign. Now, you may notice that, uh, that's not the Met Fresh logo . A while later, the store transitioned to Fine Fare Fresh, and, uh, that's not the Fine Fare logo either. But it's gotta match the Met Fresh logo that used to be there, right? Notice that the marquee sign, which used to say Met Food, now says "Fresh Supermarket Food." There are some things in life you just can't explain, such as why this store's butcher counter is in a separate room accessible only from...

Alright, we've finished up Bushwick and are now heading to the southwestern portion of Brooklyn to see the area broadly referred to as Flatbush! Flatbush is a fascinating combination of landscapes, architectural styles, cultures, and of course, supermarkets. It is, of course, a massive oversimplification to separate this group of stores into just two neighborhoods, but in the broadest sense, Prospect Lefferts Gardens is the northern section of our tour and Flatbush is the southern section. Our route will take approximately the shape of Texas (I can't think of any other way to describe it), starting in the northern arm with Prospect Lefferts Gardens and stores along Flatbush Avenue, the main thoroughfare through much of southern Brooklyn. We turn west in the northern part of Flatbush to follow Church Avenue to the border of Kensington before returning east along Cortelyou Road in Prospect Park South. At Clarendon Road, we join back up with Flatbush Avenue to continue south in ...