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Alison Roman is giving New Yorkers a taste of Bloomville—no Metro-North required. The food writer and cookbook author has brought her upstate grocery-slash-café First Bloom to the Lower East Side for a monthlong pop-up, open now through November 30 at Casetta, the cozy wine bar at 61 Hester Street. Hours run 11am to 9pm, Tuesday through Sunday and, yes, there’s a café menu to fuel your browsing.
Roman told Feed Me’s Emily Sundberg she’s “equal parts thrilled, excited and nervous to have a brick-and-mortar location in the city” and the pop-up channels exactly what makes her Delaware County shop such a pilgrimage spot. First Bloom opened last year in a one-time Table on Ten space and quickly established itself as a tiny, personality-driven “shoppy shop”—part pantry, part country store, part “wow, I did not know I needed this tin of sardines but here we are.”
The LES edition follows the same blueprint. Expect a tight edit of pantry MVPs (her tomato sauce included), tinned fish, heirloom beans, ceramics, candles and the kind of kitchen tools you swear you’ll finally replace your old ones with. Produce comes from upstate farms, flowers arrive via Fox Fodder Farm and Roman has even stocked favorite snacks with strong cult-energy. It’s all designed to feel like rummaging through someone’s very chic, very well-stocked home pantry.
Since it wouldn’t be a Roman pop-up without something hot to eat, she has also rolled out a café menu inspired by her cookbook Something From Nothing, with dishes from @janecooksforyou and daily specials from neighborhood bakery Elbow. Coffee comes courtesy of Rock Royal Farm; cider and wine flow once evening hits; and the whole thing plays out inside a wine bar that already knows its way around a cozy vibe.
For Roman, First Bloom has always been less a retail concept than a love letter to the ingredients she wants other people to cook with: good butter, anchovies at every price point, shapely pastas, excellent vinegar and the occasional sleeper hit (cod liver fans, rise up). The pop-up carries the same soul, just with a shorter shelf life.
New Yorkers have until the end of the month—minus Mondays and Thanksgiving Day—to wander in, pick up a jar of tomato sauce, grab a slice of cake and pretend they, too, own a charming upstate general store. Consider it a field trip to Bloomville without ever leaving the borough.