Table Talk With Jeremy Wayne: A perfectly practical food lover’s plaza

I like my malls to be functional. A good grocery store, a bakery, a pharmacy and a bank for starters. Throw in a shoe repair, a dry cleaner, a jewelry store (with watch repair on-site) and an optician and now you’re talking. Chichi boutiques and Pilates studios I can personally do without, but a good café is nonnegotiable. A practical plaza, if you will. 

Such a one is the Rye Ridge Shopping Center, which delivers on the basics but also enables you to eat at a different spot every day of the week and still have dining options to spare. 

Let’s start at Balducci’s Food Lover’s Market, possibly the most attractive of all the grocery group’s stores in our area. With indoor and outdoor seating, Balducci’s offers an array of prepared foods. Its bakery alone sells a luxurious carrot cake, individual pecan bourbon tarts and one of the best almond croissants going, any or all of which you can enjoy on the premises. As for the fresh-brewed “house” coffee, I’ve yet to detect the “black-cherry finish” the store claims as a hallmark, but it’s a pretty decent cup of joe nevertheless.  

Now with more than 30 branches in the Northeast, the majority of them in New York City, Dig is the fast-casual food chain backed by Danny Meyer of Union Square and Shake Shack fame, whose mission is to serve “real” food. This comes in the form of wholesome, nutritious meals you “build” yourself, with special attention paid by the kitchen to vegetables. It’s bye-bye, soggy cauliflower and watery broccoli and hello, delicious roasted, spiced sprouts and crisp potatoes. I really like this chain and what it’s doing, and I particularly like the Rye Ridge branch, with its striped awning, bijou little tables and French garden chairs outside. Back inside, a board names the head chef on duty each day – a neat touch for a chain that catches the zeitgeist. Hot honey chicken with carrots and charred broccoli is the kitchen’s current best seller.  

Dig’s almost next-door neighbor is Chopt, the creative salad company, where you order your salads, warm grain bowls and sandwich wraps via a screen and return to the front of the restaurant (after picking up your order) to sit on dinky little chairs that look as if they have come out of your child’s kindergarten class. Nothing wrong with that:  I love feeling like a 5 year old again. (Full disclosure: There are regular-sized seats, too.) Chopt is currently offering “Heat Up Your Winter Specials,” which include a spicy jalapeño goddess salad or wrap and a Serrano heat-wave bowl. The signature Yellowbird hot sauce is included.

Oh, Starbucks:  I can’t say I’m overly fond of this branch, with its psychedelic murals and loud-volume, thumping music. The coffee is standard, but the coffee shop feels unloved. On two recent visits, at different times of day, I found overflowing bins and a floor strewn with detritus. So, unless you’re desperate for a Pike Place Roast fix, a Dragon Drink or – forfend – an Iced Matcha Tea Latte, remember you have choices. 

I’ve long been a fan of this branch of the Rye Ridge Deli (also in Stamford and Westport,) with its big windows and diner-style booth seating. In addition to a mouth-watering array of baked goods, salads and sandwich fillings, the deli also offers a variety of bagels, with excellent Scottish smoked salmon and a choice of cream cheeses to fill them. It also makes a great cup of coffee – the best of all the coffees I tried in the mall, indeed. And if that’s all you want, you’re perfectly welcome to have just that and noting more, and while away an hour or two nursing it – which the especially friendly staff is happy to let you do. 

Fortina is perhaps the most “restaurant”-like of the Rye Ridge cafés and fast-food outlets, with a full-service Italian menu, including wood-fired pizza, although you could always pop in for a simple chicken sandwich at lunchtime. It also does particularly good antipasti, including excellent charcuterie, which is great for a lunchtime snack. (I love the grassy bianca sardo Sardinian cheese and intense dry-cured salami.) With an impressive interior – a striking key pattern and black-and-white floor as well as globe lamps, like so many moons, hanging from wooden rafters – this established but ever popular Italian eatery has branches in Armonk, Stamford and Yonkers. 

Last but certainly not least, Cerbone’s bakery designs, makes and bakes all manner of bespoke cakes, so this is the place to head to for the wedding cake of your dreams, or a bar mitzvah or other special occasion creation. The bakery is nut-free, certified kosher and offers plenty of gluten-free options, including its famous shadow cake. Cerbone’s also bakes the smiliest “smiley face” biscuits to make even the most recalcitrant child beam. 

Coming soon to the site of the former Red Mango is Mama Mia Dessert Bar – a first Westchester location to feature taiyaki (Japanese ice cream); Mochi doughnuts (a light, “springy” doughnut made from gluten-free Japanese flour); Korean corndogs; and shaved snow. The next in line, or natural inheritor, to Dunkin’ and Krispy Kreme, Mama Mia, I predict, will get heavy play in 2024.  

For more, visit balduccis.com; diginn.com; choptsalad.com; starbucks.com; ryeridgedeli.com; cerbonesbakery.com; and fortinapizza.com.