Special Report: Tashkent Supermarket - Greenwich Village, Manhattan, NY

Tashkent Supermarket
Owner: Odiljon Tursunov

Opening: 2024

Cooperative: none
Location: 378 6th Ave, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, NY

Photographed: January 29, 2024

It was March 2023. I was out in Brooklyn on the subway around Crown Heights and an older man walks onto my subway car, which wasn't that crowded. Turns out another older guy on the subway was an old friend of his and they get to talking. Naturally, they are not sitting anywhere near each other and are all but yelling across the subway car to each other in the thickest New York accents you can picture. As a bonus, they both seem to be just a little bit hard of hearing. They're talking about someone's birthday, I think, and then talk about going out to dinner for the party. The conversation then switches to food, so naturally I start eavesdropping. They eventually get to the subject of food shopping, and are swapping supermarket recommendations. One talks about getting vegetables at Western Beef, I think, and the other one strongly disagrees and emphatically says he knows the best place in Brooklyn to get vegetables. Slight problem: when his friend asks where it is, he can't remember the name. He describes the location, talking about the long trek from Crown Heights down to Sheepshead Bay. Finally, he triumphantly comes up with the name: "I buy all my vegetables at Tashneck!"

Okay, so Tashneck isn't a thing. He was very close, though, as Tashkent Supermarket is a small chain of grocery stores focused on fresh and prepared foods, including Uzbek specialties, as the actual city of Tashneck, I mean Tashkent, is in Uzbekistan. The chain has been growing from its original southern Brooklyn location with locations in Brighton Beach, Sheepshead Bay, and Midwood in Brooklyn; Rego Park in Queens; and soon, Bensonhurst, Brooklyn and this location here in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. The space, just north of Washington Square, is around 4,000 square feet (unless there's a basement?) and was previously a Duane Reade pharmacy until about 2016. In that small a space, it's likely the store may focus on the prepared foods more than the grocery items, and that sounds about right when we read the list of jobs they're looking to hire for. The store was supposed to open by the end of last year, but we all know how estimated opening dates for supermarkets go. I'll be back to check it out once the store opens, though! Don't forget to see yesterday's posts in Bushwick here and here, and tomorrow it's back to Newburgh!