TOUR: SY Grace Caribbean Supermarket - Eastchester, Bronx, NY

SY Grace Fish & Vegetable Caribbean Supermarket

Owner: Sea Young Chung

Opened: 1994

Cooperative: Krasdale

Location: 4018 Boston Rd, Eastchester, Bronx, NY

Photographed: March 2020

Apologies for the cut off picture there, the storefront is too wide to get the whole name in one picture. Today we're at the east end of Shopwell Plaza, about 200 feet east of the CTown we saw yesterday in the same mall.

This is a 13,000 square foot Caribbean market that specializes in perishables, while CTown is a general supermarket and, if anything, Latin more than Caribbean. CTown is also slightly smaller, at about 9 or 10,000 square feet. SY Grace also predates CTown by 6 years, and seems to be a much higher-volume store to this day. The size is in part thanks to this space, which appears to be an expansion. It houses the fruit department, which as you can see is rather enormous, with a spacious seafood section at the back.

On the other side of the wall we're looking at here, the produce department continues with vegetables and specifically root vegetables at the back, with an open prep area for vegetables to be cut to order. A very nice touch I haven't seen in many stores.

The rest of this room contains grocery items, with checkouts behind me in the above picture.

The selection of Caribbean groceries here is the largest I've ever seen, because the vast majority of the sales floor is dedicated to international items. There are maybe two aisles of standard groceries. Check out the spice selection...

You can also see how clean the place is, and how bright it is in comparison to CTown. Now on the side wall (which makes up the last aisle) is something truly spectacular.

This is hands down the largest tea selection I've ever encountered in a grocery store in my life. This entire wall is tea, stacked literally floor to ceiling. Unlike anything I've ever seen!

A look across the front-end to the far side of the store where the entrance is. This is absolutely a stop worth making if you're ever passing through the area (although traffic on Boston Road can be very bad -- it's worth it!). That's our last northeastern Bronx store, but don't worry, we'll be back later to the northwestern Bronx. For now, we're continuing east into Westchester County to see stores in Pelham Manor and New Rochelle, stay tuned!