The Bronx has tons of culinary gems to keep our palates busy and thanks to Fordham University professor Mark Naison, PhD, he’s given us 13 of his favorite affordable restaurants in our borough.

Who doesn’t appreciate good, affordable food?

Dr Naison writes:
Here are some of my favorite affordable eating spots in the Bronx. I have “field tested” all of them and can give assurance for their quality.

1.  Johnson BBQ.  790 E 163rd St, Bronx, NY 10456 between Union and Tinton Avenues. Been in the same spot for over 50 years. GREAT ribs, chicken, mac and cheese, candied yams, rice and peas. Take out only- no drinks sold. Closed Monday. Say “the professor sent you” and you will get larger portions

2.  Premium Sweets 2104 Starling Ave, Bronx, NY 10462  Excellent South Asian food in the Parkchester section of the Bronx, the site of the Bronx’s largest Bengali community. It is actually a neighborhood where you can find a parking space

3.  Pio Pio 264 Cypress Ave, Bronx, NY 10454 Great Peruvian food in a classy atmosphere in the Mott Haven section of the South Bronx. The roast chicken, ceviche, platanos, and empanadas are amazing. Also a neighborhood where parking is possible.

4.  The Crab Shanty  361 City Island Ave, Bronx, NY 10464. The best lunch special on  City Island. Has its own parking lot. Excellent garlic bread served with every meal. Excellent broiled fish cooked in many styles and terrific King Crab legs. Friendly atmosphere and a real Bronx crowd

5. Com Tam Ninh Kieu 2641 Jerome Ave, Bronx, NY 10468 Great Vietnamese food at affordable prices on Jerome Avenue near Kingsbridge Road. You know the food is good because most of the people eating there are either  Vietnamese Bronxites or doctors from the Veterans Hospital. I love their Pho!

6. Papaye  2300 Grand Concourse, Bronx, NY 10458. A Ghanaian Restaurant at Grand Concourse and 183rd Street with great food for those who like their eating on the spicy side. II love their goat kabobs, but everything is tasty. Just make sure you have lots of water with you if you do take out

7.  3 Way  384 E, 188th St, Bronx, NY 10458.  Great Dominican food within walking distance of Fordham. My favorites are the roaster chicken with rice and beans, maduros, tostones, bacalao ( codfish) pernil ( roast pork) and mafongo.

8. Venice Restaurant 772 E 149th St, Bronx, NY 10455. A South Bronx fixture for 50 years which is half the price of Arthur Avenue. Huge portions, friendly service. They do an excellent job with shrimp and calamari.  And also have some great hot hero sandwiches

9. Randazzo’s Seafood 2327 Arthur Ave, Bronx NY 10458 –  If you love clams on the half shell, this is the place to get them. Strictly take out, but incredibly delicious!



10.  Estrellita Publana III   : 2328 Arthur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458. It may seem odd to recommend a Mexican restaurant in Arthur Avenue, but this place is a slam dunk. Excellent food, big portions, reasonable prices. Passed over by most of the tourists, but not by eaters in the know!

11. Bronx Beer Hall   2344 Arthur Ave, Bronx, NY 10458  in the Arthur Avenue Market. Surprising good food, as well as excellent beer because they order from the legendary Mike’s Deli. An excellent place to hold a party, a seminar or a discussion group!

12. The G Bar   150th Street just West of the Grand Concourse.   Live Jazz, terrific happy hour, big drinks and excellent Italian food. This is where Bronx professionals gather after work. A fun spot which also has a great Sunday Brunch

13. Liebman’s Kosher Delicatessan  552 W 235th St, Bronx, NY 10463. The best old fashioned Jewish delicatessen in the Bronx.  Hug stuffed sandwiches, matzo ball soup, chopped liver. i grew up on this stuff! Maybe that’s why I am still teaching at age 71!

Mark Naison is Professor of History and African American Studies at Fordham University. A recipient of a B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Columbia University, he is the author of seven books and over 300 articles on African American politics, labor history, popular culture and education policy. His first book, Communists in Harlem in the Depression, published in 1983, is still in print, and is used in graduate courses around the nation.

Dr. Naison is the founder of the Bronx African American History Project, one of the largest community based oral history projects in the nation and has brought his research into more than 30 Bronx schools, as well as Bronx based cultural organizations and NGO’s. In recent years, the BAAHP’s research has led to granting landmark status to several streets with historic significance, as well as the founding of a cultural center honoring the Bronx’s musical heritage.

A co-founder of the Bronx Berlin Youth exchange, Naison has published articles about Bronx music and Bronx culture in German, Spanish, Catalan, and Portuguese as well as English, and given talks about these subjects in Germany, Spain and Italy. He recently published a novel, Pure Bronx, co-written with his former student Melissa Castillo-Garsow, and a book of essays on educational policy and Bronx history, Badass Teachers Unite.

His seventh book,  co-authored by Bob Gumbs, and published by Fordham University Press in September 2016, is Before the Fires: An Oral History of African American Life in the Bronx from the 1930s to the 1960s. This book is one of the featured readings in a new course offered by Dr. Naison at Fordham in Fall 2016 entitled “The Bronx: Immigration, Race and Culture.” He has also been featured on many news programs, the O’Reilly Factor, and the Chappelle Show, where his performance was satirized by Louis CK on Saturday Night Live.

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New York City Public Advocate Letitia James’s office has issued their Worst Landlord and Worst Buildings list that are ranked by total number of open violations on the list.

Two of the top ten worst buildings in The Bronx are owned by two owners who also made it to the top ten worst landlords in New York City.

1892 Morris Avenue in the Mount Hope section of the borough ranked as the worst building with a whopping 485 violations owned by Rawle Isaacs who is the 2nd worst landlord in New York City according to this list.

Over in Parkchester, 2001 Newbold Avenue, a 105 unit building with 294 HPD violations ranked as #6 in The Bronx’s worst buildings and its owner, Thomas Steiner, ranked as the 3rd worst landlord in New York City.

The ten worst buildings in The Bronx are as follows:

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These slumlords need to be held accountable. Our residents deserve better living conditions regardless of their economic status. Clean housing is a basic human right.

Check out our map below or head over to the website and check out the list for yourself.

A few years ago we wrote about how The Bronx could teach the Middle East and even the world about coexistence, for you see, it is here in our borough at the Islamic Cultural Center of North America where a mosque, a synagogue, and a church worship under one roof.

(Watch the touching video on how these two religions came to worship under one roof)

Sounds like an impossibility but Sheikh Musa Drammeh provided space to a local synagogue so that they could continue to worship in peace after they Jewish house of worship loss their own space due to a dwindling population.



Drammeh said it was a no brainer to offer the space to coexist together because, “…we’re all children of God.”

Now everything is on hold because there is a delinquent tax debt on the property with a scheduled public auction this coming December 12th.

According to a segment on News12 The Bronx, a “benefactor” is offering $1 million already so fingers crossed that this worthy Bronx institution can survive and continue to doing the wonderful work they have been doing.

Over 400 apartments spread across three new “affordable” (yes they may seem affordable but to the community who truly needs affordable housing, they either make too much or too little to actually qualify for the apartments leaving thousands of local residents unable to benefit from these developments…but that’s another story) housing developments in Melrose and West Farms in The Bronx are now accepting applications via NYC Housing Connect.

The developments are as follows:

Elton Crossing Apartments – 899 Elton Avenue in Melrose
198 new construction apartments featuring studios to 3 bedroom units with rents ranging from $396/month to $1,740 depending on size of apartment and household income. The building features a half-time concierge, laundry, fitness room, and landscaped seating areas.
Income requirements:

294 E 162nd Street – Melrose
88 units ranging from studios to 3 bedroom units with rents from $864/month to $1,287/month depending on unit size and household income. The building features a 24 hour attended lobby, landscaped community courtyard, fitness room, community and computer room, and a laundry room.
Income requirements:

West Farms Apartments – 1939 West Farms Road & 1926 Longfellow Avenue
This development has 180 apartments ranging in size from 1 to 3 bedroom units with rents of $396/month to $1,898/month depending on size of unit and household income. The development features outdoor recreation space, laundry room, a bike room, and a community room.
Income requirements:

To apply for any of these units online, visit NYC Housing Connect and if you don’t have an account, you’ll have to create one in order to proceed with the application process.

May the odds be ever in your favor!

My mouth is watering from watching this video and I think I know where I’m going this week when I head to Arthur Avenue in The Bronx, New York City’s REAL Little Italy (we can’t say that enough ‘cuz it’s true).

I mean you spend any amount of time up here and it’s no wonder it was declared one of America’s Great Streets last year.

CBS News highlights one of our favorites: Zero Otto Nove (you gotta try the Risotto al Pescatore with shrimp, mussels, clams, and scallops)

Anywho, check out the video below:

In a nation where one of the basic rights of its society is that its citizens are innocent until proven guilty, oftentimes individuals of lesser economic means, especially those of color, end up losing everything due to the inability to post bail.

Some can lose their jobs, apartments, and even their children.

And in some cases, even their own lives.

In The Bronx, they sit in jail for days, months, and even years like Kalief Browder who took his life after being a victim of the very system that says you’re innocent until proven guilty…unless you can’t make bail which he couldn’t.

The toll on him became too much and the system failed him. He hung himself.

Robin Steingberg, who founded and once ran The Bronx Defenders now heads The Bronx Freedom Fund which for the past 10 years has donated thousands of dollars to poor New Yorkers so that they can post bail and not spend a moment longer than they have to in jail.

The Bronx Freedom Fund offers these sobering statistics:

• People who await trial in jail are 4x more likely to be sentenced to time in jail
• Only 1 in 10 New Yorkers are able to pay bail at time of arraignment
• Without The Bronx Freedom Fund, over 90% of people who stay in jail on bail will plead guilty, even if they did not commit the crime

Now, Steinberg is set to take this program which has liberated thousands from the burdens of the bail system and roll it out on a much larger scale across the country as the first of its kind in the nation.

According to The New York Times, the fund plans to post bail for over 150,000 economically disadvantaged defendants under a program known as the Bail Project opening offices in Tulsa, Oklahoma and St Louis by January 2018 and spread across over three dozens across the country within five years.

Ms Steinberg told The New York Times, “We are hoping to end the immediate human suffering of people sitting in cells because they are too poor to pay their bail.”

Although there are many components to the criminal justice system which needs to be reformed, this is just a small piece of it and along with all the other measures like those proposed by New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, like shutting down Rikers Island and vacating outstanding warrants for low-level summonses over 10 years old, it is a start.

Read the full story: Bronx Charity Founder Wants to Pay Bail for Poor Defendants Nationwide

To learn more about The Bronx Freedom Fund, head over to their website.

If you are a Bronx-based artist or know one, then this is for you so please tag or share with your artist friend! This Wednesday, November 15th at The Bronx Museum, please join The Bronx Children’s Museum for an Artist Info Session from 5PM-7PM.

The Bronx Children’s Museum (which is finally under construction) is looking for Bronx-based artists for design ideas for the new space at Mill Pond Park along the Harlem River Waterfront (across from Bronx Terminal Market in the old Power House building).

Be a part of history and learn more!

The Bronx Museum is located at 1040 Grand Concourse at 165th Street.

A mural in a Bronx auto body shop created by The Royal Kingbee and Per One of the FX Crew echoes the famous “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” but with utility workers raising an electric pole with a Puerto Rican flag attached to it in a landscape devastated by Hurricane Maria.

First reported by David Gonzalez in The New York Times, the mural in Mike Vargas’s auto body shop is a reminder to the crisis going on impacting not just the 3.5 million residents on the island of Puerto Rico but to the thousands of displaced refugees here on the mainland, including his mother and aunt.

It is a reminder that despite these 3.5 million United States citizens being abandoned by the United States government and the Trump administration, despite all the hardships they are facing, they will rise once again by their own means as they have always done.

Read the full story: Battered and Tattered, Puerto Rico’s Flag Still Waves

Vision Zero is actually working.

Here’s a statistic The Bronx can be proud of: The borough is the second safest in NYC for pedestrians according to data collected by NYCrossWalk.

Of the 9,465 pedestrian collisions to date, The Bronx accounts for 12.8% of these accidents citywide (Staten Island comes as the safest).



East 149th Street in Melrose is the most dangerous with 11 pedestrian collisions at three different intersections.

Another notable tidbit of data is that pedestrian collisions dropped after Mayor Bill de Blasio’s Vision Zero campaign to lower pedestrian fatalities resulted in the city lowering the speed limit from 30MPH to 25MPH.

Per NYCrossWalk’s website, The following are the most dangerous intersections for pedestrians in The Bronx with total number of collisions this year to date:

1. E 138th Street @Brook Avenue / 5 collisions
2. E 149th Street @ Grand Concourse / 4 collisions
3. Grand Concourse @ E 183rd St / 4 collisions
4. 3rd Avenue @ E 149th Street / 4 collisions
5. White Plains Road @ E 224th Street / 3 collisions
6. 3rd Avenue @ E 187th Street / 3 collisions
7. Bruckner Boulevard @ Hunts Point Avenue / 3 collisions
8. West Burnside Avenue @ Andrews Avenue / 3 collisions
9. E 149th Street @ Courtlandt Avenue / 3 collisions
10. East Tremont @ Park Avenue / 3 collisions

Check out the map below or head over to their website for more information.

Data Source: NYC Open Data / https://data.cityofnewyork.us

View NYCrossWalk on Zlotolaw.com

4 years ago we shared a story about a “castle” built atop the second highest point in New York City (or so the listing says) in The Bronx neighborhood of Riverdale (Fieldston to be exact, actually) featured in Curbed.

Back then, the 3,156 square foot mansion was on the market for $3.65 million and despite being reduced a few times it still hasn’t sold.

Brick Underground reports that 4720 Grosvenor Ave, which features 30 Inc thick stone walls that were actually salvaged from the ruins of a real deal Croatian castle, had been on and off the market since 2009 both for sale and for rent.

So if you have a few shekels around know that you too can live in your very own castle.

Dracula, ghosts, and ghouls not included. Well, none that we know of.

Check out some of the pics below via Stribling:

Call it HERstory.

The Bronx born and raised rapper, Cardi B (who’s of Dominican descent) just made Billboard history by having her first three hits on the charts enter the top ten simultaneously in the Hot  R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. 



After 6 weeks in the number 1 spot, her “Bodak Yellow (Money Moves)” slid to #2 while debuting “Motorsport” at #5 ( a collaboration with Migos and Nicki Minaj) as her feature on G-Eazy’s “No Money” track moved into #10. 

This isn’t the first time a woman has had three hit top ten songs simultaneously on the charts but Cardi  is the first to see her first top ten at the same time on that coveted list. 

Not bad for a woman from The Bronx, eh? 

This coming Tuesday, November 14th on World Diabetes Day, New York City’s first Diabetes Relief Center will open its doors to the public with a ribbon cutting ceremony open to the public beginning at 10:30AM.

Earlier this summer we reported that Diabetes Relief Center would provide a new type of treatment for people who suffer from the disease as the first of its kind center in the entire Northeast region.

The treatment, which according to Trina Diabetes Relief Centers, “…mimics effect that normal pancreas has on liver…”, is administered intravenously in their clinical centers and delivers micro pulses of insulin.

Unlike traditional insulin treatment which simply treats glucose, this treatment affects nerve endings, the brain, retinas, liver, kidneys and according to research has been shown to halt or even reverse serious complications from advanced diabetes according to Diabetes Relief Center.

To learn more about Diabetes Relief Center, check out their website or call 866-224-4662 to make an appointment.

Diabetes Relief Center is located at 2825 Third Avenue, Suite 200, at The Hub Medical Center between 148th and 149th Street and all are invited to the grand opening on Tuesday.