Fairway Market
“Everything you could possibly need under one roof and no crazy waiting times like Trader Joes.”
“Having lived in Kips Bay for now 7 years, it had always been such a hassle to get fresh meats/poultry/seafood and vegetables.”
“Compared to the Gristedes a block away, the prices are great, the selection is great, the staff is great.”
Fairway Market
Take-out: Yes
Accepts Credit Cards: Yes
Bike Parking: Yes
Price range.
$$ Price range Moderate
8 reviews
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Love love love fairway. This is where i do all of my shopping.
Great produce selection. Great variety of standard products.
Massive organics section in both nonperishables and produce.
Very fresh produce.
They have ethnic aisles with Mexican, asian, european, and other products.
They have a massive coffee selection with barrels of every kind of whole bean you can imagine. They will advise you on best kind of coffee for you, weigh the beans, grind them at request, etc. and the section smells amazingggg.
Also a very large beer and drink selection. One of the best standard beer selections in the city outside of a craft bottle store.
Massive meat counter and fish and seafood counters. Fish is usually pretty good. Meat selection is always great. Prices are reasonable. Variety is the best you will find in the city. Both packaged and unpackaged versions of all meats. As well as a separate deli counter for sliced meats, cheeses, and prepared foods.
There's a whole fresh pasta section in addition to dry pasta. An olive oil bar. A pickle and olive bar. A dried fruit and nut and nut butter section. A protein bar section. A candy area. A cold beer pick your six pack area. A hot bar for hot prepped foods. Etc. they have it all.
They also do free shipping if you spend $100 pr more within approved delivery zones. Which we always take advantage of if we are doing our large semi-monthly shopping trip.
If you go to gristedes or dagastinos to do your shopping when fairway is a close walk you are a sheer moron. Sorry.
While I still prefer the Fairway Market in Harlem, I really like this one too.
This Fairway lacks two things that the one in Harlem has: 1–this Fairway has no parking lot, and 2–There is no cold room in this Fairway (I really like the cold room! 🙂 ).
That being said, this Fairway still has many things going for it. It has the same great products. The olive bar here is wonderful too. It is also less maze-like than the Fairway in Harlem, and the one in the Upper West Side, with wider aisles.
This Fairway is also more convenient to public transportation, with the 2nd and 3rd Avenue buses a short walk away. It's also closer to my work, so I may come here more often.
It is close to the NYU hospital, and the last time I visited was around 5:30. It was crowded with many people wearing scrubs. Like me, they had just got off work and were getting groceries on the way home. The line was long, but it moved quickly. It wasn't bad, but you may want to come during a less busy time.
I came in an hour before closing and whizzed through the aisles to get my necessities. I wanted to get the San Pellegrino blood orange soda and asked a guy who was nearby restocking soda if it was still on sale. He didn't bother to look for the named product and told me the cashier would know. I brought the items in my basket to the check out and asked the cashier if she knew if the SP blood orange soda was n sale but she said she needed to see the soda in order to let me know. She asked a co-worker who may have even been the manager to go get a 6 pack. The manager appeared perturbed to have to go get it for me. She comes back and throws down plastic bottles of mandarin orange flavored seltzer water and declared they don't have any blood orange soda, only what she brought me. I told her it was not what I wanted and it was definitely there in cans. She stormed off and took a long time to come back. I almost gave up seeing the line waiting behind me to check out as it was almost closing time. When she finally returned she seemed even more annoyed, left the 6-pack on the conveyer belt, turned and huffed off. My simple question seemed to be an ordeal for this crew. Had I not waited as long as I did, I would've just said to forget it just based on the indignant look this manager gave me. I was at Whole Foods earlier in the day and by comparison, this 2nd Avenue Fairway is a far cry from the cleaner, more organized and friendlier WF. The end of the day is not the time to ask this staff an easy question of whether something was on sale because in the sequence of each person's response they either a) don't know and are not willing to go find out for you b) can't help you unless she has the physical specimen in front of her to scan (guess there is no flyer or list of sale items from which the cashier could refer or c) been the unfortunate one to have been asked to get the item and bring it to the cashier and customer and you make sure by your face and grunts how put off you are to help out. I will come here only out of necessity and not for their customer service. The employees are not concerned with losing the sale or worse yet, losing a customer. I would even forgive the end of the day staleness of the prepared food which was the primary reason I came in but decided not to risk eating any old food. The staff is not glad to see you at the end of their long day so keep your questions to yourself! Don't expect helpfulness and useful/accurate information either.
I go out of my way to do my grocery shopping here. The grocery store has great lighting, great inventory and is extremely large. My only complaints are that it gets very crowded, but the lines move quickly so I don't mind too much and also the inventory is scattered (i.e. flavored waters in 3 different aisles.) This makes it hard to find everything as quickly as I would like to. But compared to other NYC grocery stores, this place is a gem.
Fairway is the best market in the area, hands down. There's an endless supply of produce and everything is always super fresh. I love how much they have to offer and how many different brands there are to try – I always finding myself wanting to try something new. The meat and fish counters are awesome there's a lot to pick from. I love the different flavors of marinated chicken – they're all delicious.
The staff is extremely friendly and helpful and the store is always clean and neat. Even when lines get long at the registers it never ends up being more than a few minutes of a wait.
Aside from a small street-level entrance, this Fairway Market is below ground. Unfortunately, only one of their two escalators was functioning on our last visit (they also have a large glass elevator), which contributed to the lack-luster appearance of the place. They do pack a lot of groceries and specialty goods into this store given the increasingly expensive neighborhood, and although if you shop with restraint you can find some reasonable prices (we bought exactly one loaf of fresh brioche from the bakery counter before checking-out and it was a good buy!), this isn't a store at which we'd do general grocery shopping.
Not the cheapest option for grocery shopping in NY (cough Trader joes cough cough).
It has all the normal type food though, aka Special K cereal, which TJ doesn't have.
They have an extensive meat/butcher area and they do have some things you can buy by the pound. (The tricolor quinoa comes at a great price, ~3 cups dry quinoa for $3.50).
The aisles aren't set up methodically, you have to kind of wander around to find things, but there are a lot of salespeople mulling around who want to help.
In the butcher area though, there's not great options for raw chicken, like why is everything sold in such large quantities, I don't want $20 worth of chicken hanging around my apartment.
Good selection. Prepackaged food is alright. The gourmet cookies go well at work! Make friends, buy cookies. Give them salad, make enemies.