Baresha was everything a good deli should be: cheap, charming and a disaster for your arteries. Sat at the north-east corner of Varick and Charlton in Hudson Square, it was a pocket of old New York, where a huge meatball sub cost half as much as a salad down the street.
And then, just like that, FT Alphaville’s favourite lunch spot was no more. Baresha’s Albanian-American owner John told us in March, through teary eyes, how after more than two decades in the neighbourhood he’d been forced to make way for a higher-paying tenant. His business closed the following week.
Who could this usurper be? Despite the Dunkin' Donuts opposite, the Seven Grammes Caffe around the corner from that, and the Starbucks within a couple of minutes’ walk, we learned the space would soon become home to a new caffeination spot: Mamdanistan’s latest branch of Chinese café chain Luckin Coffee.