Three On Thursday is a new weekly column in which area residents name three favorite local establishments they’d like to recommend, and what it is about them they like so much. These are Sean Sweeney‘s selections:
- Pino’s Prime Meats on Sullivan, because it offers delicious steaks from $9.99/pound to $69.99/pound, cut to your order. And it is one of the last neighborhood butcher shops in the city. All that is missing is the sawdust on the floor. Newport steak at Pino’s is tender and delicious at about $9.99, a real bargain. They prepare a rack of lamb, all nicely done. Never had a bad cut there. They sell a lot to restaurants, which is an indication of their quality. At Christmas, they sell specialities like cotechino, a round sausage served with lintels during the holiday season. (149 Sullivan, below West Houston)
- Raffetto’s on West Houston—well, for starters, any store that makes its own pasta and sauces in the back and that has been around for a century can’t be all that bad. I don’t have to recommend Raffetto’s products: each one cries out, “Buy me.” Do it. You can’t go wrong. But de riguer are their raviolis and sauces, made there, using the family recipe. Raffetto’s sells the normal dry pasta we are used to but they also sell the moist, fresh pasta itself. Straight from the back and at the end of the counter is a century-old pasta-cutting machine. The customer gets to pick what size to cut the pasta: spaghetti width, or fettucini or linguini widths, for example, or anywhere in between. (144 West Houston, at MacDougal)
- The Canal Street Post Office, because it is an Art Deco treasure and it is so airy and grand inside. (Canal and Greene)
Born to Irish parents in Glasgow and raised in Brooklyn, Sean Sweeney moved to SoHo in the 70s and never left. A resident of Greene Street, Sweeney is the long-time director of the community watchdog organization SoHo Alliance, and a former president of the Downtown Independent Democrats.