Quick answer
Arthur Avenue is a 1.2-mile street in the Belmont section of the Bronx that anchors the borough's Little Italy, an Italian American food district dating from the 1910s and 1920s. Delis, bakeries, butchers and restaurants burst along the avenue and East 187th Street.
Full transcript
The avenue that never moved uptown
When Manhattan's Little Italy shrank to a tourist strip, the Bronx kept the real thing. Arthur Avenue runs about 1.2 miles from Crotona Park North to Fordham Road through Belmont, and it has been the heart of the Bronx's Italian food world since Italian immigrants built lives here in the 1910s and 1920s. Look behind the sidewalk awnings on the avenue and East 187th Street and you will find the delis, bakeries, butchers and family restaurants that make this the Little Italy New Yorkers actually shop in.
A pizza tour on foot
The easiest way to eat your way through is to pick a route along the avenue and its side street, East 187th Street. Pastry from the century-old bakeries, mozzarella pulled to order from the cheese shops, prosciutto sliced thin over a wooden counter at the delis — merchants run these businesses the way their families have for generations, and much of the food is made on the floor above the sidewalk. Try the thin-crust pie at the old red-sauce restaurants and the ricotta at the pastry counters. Sundays the avenue is quieter and thinner; a weekday morning lets you watch the butchers and bakers work. Either way, come hungry.
The name behind it
The avenue honors Chester A. Arthur, the 21st president. In the late 19th century Catherine Lorillard, who admired Arthur, asked that the main street of the new district be named for him — a small political homage baked into the grid. Decades later Arthur Avenue became one of America's great street backdrops: Marty opens here, A Bronx Tale is set in its shadow, and The Sopranos filmed at Mario's, the same restaurant where Coppola once hoped to stage a Godfather murder scene the owner turned down. Order something at a counter and you may be standing in a scene from a film about this exact block.