NYC Flâneur
Daniel Emilio Soares descends from the legendary New York City grocer Louis Balducci, his Pugliese great-grandfather, who established his eponymous market in Brooklyn in the early 20th century. Soares lengthens this lineage with Alimentari Flâneur, previously an aesthetically driven produce and specialty goods market; now an au courant catering business with a private hosting space (the Bottega), filling offices with vignettes of figs, cigarettes, and towering floral arrangements, while building silver pyramids of hand-layered tiramisu for brides who can afford them. Can an upscale marketplace or a curated vignette of muscat grapes and radicchio at an activation still act as community catalysts, a return to simple indulgences, at the pace of New York City?
I met Daniel while on line at his erstwhile alimentari, underneath Essex Market in the Lower East Side. As we talked about his store—where he sourced his goods, how we both came to love food—a long line formed behind me. He didn’t acknowledge the pressure, so I didn't either. That alone kept me coming back through the seasons until the market closed and he moved uptown. Years later, Daniel and I reconvened on a bench in Central Park to catch up about his new ventures. So bracing was the February cold that I could barely think, let alone remember how to conduct an interview. He seemed unbothered, sipping his buckwheat tea, watching the few people unfazed enough to join us outside walk by with their dogs or strollers.
Our conversation became a meandering flânerie, that art of aimless wandering, and considered how New York’s most in-demand flâneur spends a typical day, how he toes the contradiction between his brand of slow and romantic living and the stark realities of operating a small, self-funded business, and how prioritizing ideals, dreams, and aesthetics over practicality isn’t just enriching—it’s possible. Here’s how he does it:
How am I living right now? I'll give you a Monday. I wake up at 5:30 a.m. The stillness between 5 and 7 a.m. is one of the greatest luxuries of all.
I try to ritualize everything I do, from washing my face to brushing my teeth. That extends to breakfast. I try to serve it fully plated and sit down, eat, and just be present with that meal. I gift that to myself. And I don't drink coffee anymore.I was attached to the identity of drinking espresso, but I realized it was never about the coffee for me; it was about ritual. Taking ten minutes to sit in a beautiful room and drink something warm. I was having very bad panic attacks. I was having too many espressos, so I cut out caffeine, cold turkey. I now drink a lot of buckwheat tea.
I’ll then go to my pilates studio or take a walk in Central Park before sunrise.
They’ve stopped doing breakfast, but I used to go downtown to Il Buco Alimentari and work there for hours—let’s call it nine to one. Il Buco is a fucking accident of a restaurant. I adore that. It accepted and embraced its fate: We were a store, and to keep paying the bills, we became a restaurant.
Later, I go up to the Bottega in Harlem, where I spend a lot of time thinking about what we're trying to do. With Alimentari, I had to wake up every single day and make that store work, sell enough fruits and vegetables to pay my rent. The Bottega is my way of maintaining ownership over my time and my output. I want to give all of myself in those five hours hosting you.
The gift we give is not luxury or art. We're giving you presence. That's what food teaches you. There are a lot of things that a chef in New York can do to make a fig from Mexico taste good in March. But what chef can ever replicate a fig picked off its tree in August?
When Alimentari started, it was the pandemic, and I had just fallen in love for the first time. I spent days concocting these insane romantic gestures for her. And then, with the Alimentari, seducing myself and everybody else. I would ask myself, what world do I want to build? I would dedicate hours every day to conceptualizing that world.
How am I living my life right now? I am trying to live my life the way I lived back then, making grand romantic gestures. Enjoying simple pleasures is a radical act in a world that is constantly trying to convince you that you need more—that is, in fact, set up to encourage that type of behavior. But you can't be loud about it. I've tried living that way, and being loud only intensified the contradiction—the more the simplicity, the pleasure isn’t yours. You keep it for yourself. Make it yours, on your terms.
Christoph Tsang-Gross is a New York–based writer and the co-author of the James Beard-nominated Made Here: Recipes and Reflections from New York City's Asian Communities.
