Bedford Park

The covered market Fiorello La Guardia built in 1940 to get the pushcarts off Arthur Avenue, still running as a row of independent stalls under one roof. Mike's Deli is the big one, with mozzarella, sandwiches and a counter you eat at. There are butchers, a produce stall, a cigar roller and a pasta maker in there too.

Mon to Sat, 9am to 5pm. Closed Sunday. Mike's Deli inside runs Mon to Thu 7:30am to 6pm, Fri to 7pm, Sat 7am to 8pm, closed Sunday

The New York Public Library's largest Bronx branch, a four-story building on East Kingsbridge Road with an auditorium, a gallery wall, a teen floor and the Bronx reference collection. It is open until nine four nights a week. There are tables with power. A public restroom is inside, and it costs nothing.

Mon to Thu, 9am to 9pm. Fri and Sat, 10am to 8pm. Sun, noon to 6pm. Individual floors keep shorter hours, with the concourse level 11am to 5pm

Dominick's opened as a bar in 1962 and still works the way it worked then. There is no printed menu and no printed bill, both of which arrive spoken, the seating is long communal tables and it is cash only. The cooking is Italian-American standards done plainly and in quantity. You will very likely wait on the sidewalk, because nobody takes a reservation, and the wait moves.

Thu to Sat, noon to 9pm. Sun, noon to 8pm. Closed Monday to Wednesday. Cash only

The small wooden farmhouse Poe rented in 1846 for three dollars a month, where his wife Virginia died and where he wrote Annabel Lee and Eureka. It was moved across the Grand Concourse into Poe Park in 1913 and the Bronx County Historical Society runs it for the Parks Department. The park around it has a 1925 bandshell and a visitor center, and that part is free and open whether the cottage is or not.

Thu and Fri, 10am to 3pm. Sat, 10am to 4pm. Sun, 1pm to 5pm. Five dollars, three concession. The Society asks you to book a time by phone or email. Poe Park itself is free and open daily

The oldest pastry shop in Bronx Little Italy, opened in 1912 and still using the original oven and the original recipes. Sfogliatelle, pignoli cookies and cannoli in the cases. Espresso and coffee come to the tables in a tiled interior that has not been refitted. It is around the corner from the Arthur Avenue crowd rather than on it. You can sit down here, which matters because most of the bakeries on this street are counters.

Daily, 7am to 7pm. The Bronx Little Italy merchant file posts 7am to 8pm, so the later hour is possible but not relied on here

A slice-and-pasta place on Bedford Park Boulevard East, right under the elevated 4 at Jerome Avenue. Slices, pies, baked dishes and a short list of beer and wine. It is a counter with tables, the kind of place students and hospital staff eat at on the way somewhere else.

Daily, 10am to 10pm

Mario Madonia started this bakery in 1918 and it has stayed in the family since, on Arthur Avenue, baking in a deck oven installed the year it opened. Pane di casa, olive bread and the lard bread people come across the borough for, plus cannoli filled when you ask rather than in advance. It opens at half past six in the morning. There is no seating and the transaction takes two minutes.

Mon to Sat, 6:30am to 7pm. Sun, 6:30am to 6pm

The slice place at the corner of East 187th Street and Arthur Avenue, open under the name Full Moon Pizza from 1976 until a change of owner renamed it in 2023. New York slices, Sicilian squares, rice balls and potato croquettes over a counter, with tables at the back. It is where people on Arthur Avenue eat when they are not sitting down to a meal.

Mon to Thu, 11am to 8:30pm. Fri and Sat, 11am to 9:30pm. Sun, noon to 8:30pm

Two hundred and fifty acres on the far side of the Bronx River from Fordham, with the glass Enid A. Haupt Conservatory at the middle of it and fifty acres of forest that was never cleared. You can spend twenty minutes or four hours in it and it works either way. New York City residents get the outdoor grounds free on Wednesdays, and everyone gets them free between ten and eleven that morning.

Tue to Sun, 10am to 6pm, and select Monday holidays. All-Garden Pass thirty-five dollars on a weekday and thirty-nine at a weekend, fifteen and seventeen for children two to twelve. NYC residents can buy grounds-only access for fifteen dollars, and get the grounds free all day on Wednesdays

A Webster Avenue diner counter that opens at six in the morning six days a week. Eggs, coffee in a mug, a griddle and a row of stools. Nothing about it has been updated and nothing about it needs to be.

Mon to Sat, 6am to 4pm. Sun, 7am to 3pm

A Bainbridge Avenue coffee shop that serves breakfast all day and stays on until eight at night, which almost no diner up here does. Booths, a counter, and a menu that runs from eggs to burgers to a dinner special. It sits on the old Little Belfast strip, most of which has turned over to other things.

Mon to Sat, 7am to 8pm. Sun, 7am to 4pm

A bar built into the Arthur Avenue market in 2013 that pours Bronx Brewery, Gun Hill and other New York beer and lets you eat whatever the surrounding stalls are selling. There are long tables and it spills onto the sidewalk in good weather. When the market closes around it in the late afternoon the bar keeps going on its own.

Tue, noon to midnight. Wed, noon to 10pm. Thu, noon to 11pm. Fri, noon to midnight. Sat, 11am to 11pm. Sun, noon to 6pm. Closed Monday