Queens won’t be the only borough with a night market come this weekend.
Billed as a “global food celebration,” the first-ever Bronx Night Market will assemble more than 40 food and beverage vendors representing the city’s diverse culinary offerings in Fordham Plaza on Saturday.
The monthly, open-air festival — a collaboration between quarterly magazine Edible Bronx and the Bronx-based creative agency Blox, with support from the Fordham BID — will also feature local merchants and live performances, according to the event website.
The market, organizers said, is an “effort to bring awareness of just how amazing our borough is, and how much there is to offer by way of food, drink, culture, and performers.”
More than half the vendors serving up international eats will be Bronx-based businesses. Those include: Empanology, a catering company making Puerto Rican-style empanadas with creative fillings like chicken truffle mac ‘n’ cheese and summer squash; Tripla Panna Ice Cream, a fledgling ice creamery scooping out of the Mottley Kitchen cafe in Mott Haven; and Millie Peartree Fish Fry & Soul Food, a Southern kitchen serving up catfish strips and fried shrimp on the Grand Concourse.
“We choose vendors based on the menu, business practices and of course, THE FOOD,” organizers said.
Empanology founder Jason Alicea, who will be serving at least four savory pockets and one sweet one, calls the food scene in the Bronx “super underappreciated” and said he is especially looking forward to the market’s debut because his business opens its first brick-and-mortar shop the following weekend in Mott Haven.
Like the Queens International Night Market, the boogie down borough’s version will also highlight local artisans and merchants, such as The Bronxer founder and photographer Alex Rivera, painter Christy Ayala and The Lit. Bar owner Noëlle Santos.
Entry to the event is free, and vendors are setting prices at $3, $5 or $7 an item, Gothamist reported Tuesday.
Supplying a live soundtrack for the night market’s debut in June are local singer-songwriter The Bryan Durieux Project, Brooklyn-based fusion band Consumata and DJ Sabronxura.
The festival, kicking off at 4 p.m. on June 30, will recur on the last Saturday of every month through October.
Night markets began as a phenomenon in Asia, where the arrival of electricity gave locals the chance to sells their goods outdoors after the scorching daylight hours.
In 2015, Queens International Night Market founder John Wang modeled his project in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park on the night markets he had grown up visiting in Taiwan.
