The Bronx Night Market Is Back
When we first launched the Bronx Night Market (BNM) in the summer of 2018, the primary focus was to bring an experience to The Bronx that highlights both local and global cuisine, all the while supporting small businesses and entrepreneurship. The focus of the BNM hasn’t changed much—if anything the focus on these points has sharpened, and in doing so, we've created an experience for our second season that is bigger, and better than ever before.
Full disclosure: I’m one of the founders of BNM, along with my partner Marco Shalma, and with support from our partners The Fordham BID.
It’s hard to describe the feeling I get at every Bronx Night Market event, watching something, that was merely a dream a few years ago, come to life in a way far greater than I ever imagined.
In 2017, a year into working on Edible Bronx and venturing to food festivals and events, I recognized these incredibly hard-working entrepreneurs that are passionate about the food they produce, and the community that they’re apart of—and I knew I wanted to curate that incredible feeling into something for The Bronx.
In 2018, we launched the Bronx Night Market at Fordham Plaza, a place I was very familiar with having spent many of my days as a Fordham University student in and around Fordham Plaza. I knew this was the place to host the event.
One of the challenges of the first season was that I had never produced an event, especially not one as large and with as many moving parts and logistics as The Bronx Night Market. Luckily for me, I wasn’t alone. The Fordham BID was there to help with navigating permits and city-systems, and Marco was there working hard to create a marketing campaign to get the word out and ensure people would actually show up—and people did show up, a lot of people showed up and continued to show up and support throughout the entire season.
It’s May 2019, and we’re just a few days away from our second season opener. I can now say, I’ve produced an event, a large event with thousands of attendees, hundreds of vendors, and media attention—but not much has changed, except the nerves have turned into excitement, and the fear has turned into anticipation.
Now that you know the inner workings of The Bronx Night Market and how this all came to be, let’s jump in on what to expect.
The Bronx Night Market returns to Fordham Plaza this summer, starting May 25th with a robust line up of vendors that span five continents and the five boroughs.
The vendor line up for the first half of the season incorporates a long list of Bronx Night Market fan favorites, including The Fried Kitchen, a Bronx-based pop up that makes loaded potato waffles fresh to order, topped with tender fried chicken, creating a unique chicken and waffle sandwich, you’re not likely to find anywhere else in the city. Grace’s Culinary Specialties, another Bronx-based pop up that specializes in home-style West African cuisine, and Rostacy Jamaican, a booth where you will find the chef and owner Rosie behind a grill, basting chicken with jerk marinade throughout the evening at all ten dates.
In addition to alum vendors, over 20 new vendors are joining the Bronx Night Market for the first half of this season, bringing a taste of Asia, the Caribbean, and Latin America, like C Bao Asian Buns, Moffle Bar, The BX Burger Co, City Island Seafood Shack, Sam's Fried Ice Cream, HyungJae Hot Dogs, Uptown Ice, and San Antonio’s Wood Fire Pizza.
Joining the foodie fun, libations will be flowing all night long thanks to The Bronx Brewery pouring beers, and Milea Estate Vineyard serving hard cider and Hudson Valley produced wines.
In addition to food and drink, attendees can enjoy hand-crafted packaged goods and merchandise from local vendors like Bronx Native, Made By Eric Michael who sell a variety of printed t-shirts, Playful Event and Catanonik selling handmade jewelry, Somos Earth all natural skin care products, and of course, you’ll be able to find the latest edition and past issues of Edible Bronx magazine.
For the complete vendor and performance lineup, check out www.TheBronxNightMarket.com
Be sure to check out the first event of the season on May 25 at Fordham Plaza, 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.
