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Community Corner

Urban Oyster Tour Explores the Small Business Eateries of Carroll Gardens

David Naczycz offers locals and tourists alike a taste of local food, history and culture.

Carroll Gardens resident David Naczycz begs you to consider the oyster.

For many Brooklyn residents, oysters evoke a bygone time in the borough’s history, when it was one of the world’s largest exporters of bivalves. For Naczycz, oysters, whose reserves have since been greatly depleted by pollution and over-consumption, serve not only as a reminder of the importance of preservation, but also as a battle cry to action.

“It seems like New York has so many great neighborhoods like Carroll Gardens that we'll never run out of them, but like the oysters, people think they'll be around forever,” cautioned Naczycz. “But if people don't nurture them and take care of them by, for example, shopping at places that make that neighborhood great, then you see that neighborhood disappear.”

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It was with this concern in mind that Naczycz founded Urban Oyster with college friend and fellow “history nerd” Cindy VandenBosch. For the past six years, the Oyster staff have been leading packs of tourists and locals alike through Brooklyn’s breweries, Midtown’s food carts and the industrial park of Brooklyn’s Navy Yard.

And starting this Friday, Naczycz embarks on a new adventure. On the “Eat Like a Local Tour – Carroll Gardens,” Naczycz guides tour participants through the neighborhood he calls home, in order to traverse the area’s unique culinary landscape.  

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For Naczycz, the trend of eating locally sparked his interest in featuring the neighborhood.

“What was interesting to us is that there's this new movement that has emerged of local eating,” said Naczycz. “We thought that Carroll Gardens was one of the best examples of that.”

The tour will forge a path of local establishments, both new and old, including such favorites as and . Naczycz admits that with such an abundance of delicious, local food, the curation of the tour was a challenge.

“We wanted to try to create a representative sample that would let us point out all the different things the neighborhood has to offer,” he said, acknowledging some limiting factors. “I would have loved to include and but I just couldn't get the tour all the way down Court Street.”

The tour will, however, hit some Court Street classics, including .

“I give them a little explanation of coffee and how we roast it and how we come up with the different blends,” said owner Joanny D’Amico. “They’re getting a real lesson in coffee from beginning to end and they're also getting a true history and sense of our area since we've been here 63 years.”

And the tour’s challenges aren’t just geographic.

“There is a temptation in this neighborhood to have way too many sweets. You don't want to do that on the tour because you don't want people to get a sugar overload.” explained Naczycz. “I've never lived in a place with so many bakeries and ice cream shops!”

One of the sweet spots that made the tour’s itinerary is , whose co-owner Peter Freeman thinks there’s more than just the quality and variety of food that make the neighborhood special.  

“What makes Carroll Gardens interesting is that there is a lot of owner-operated restaurants,” says Freeman. ”If you come in here, chances are that you'll see me and my sister. In other places [in the neighborhood], you'll see the people who own it and it gives you an experience… to interact with the visionary or the proprietor.”

The tour runs three and a half hours and costs $49 per person. Part of that cost goes to compensating the local businesses for their hospitality while another portion of the ticket sales from each tour is donated to a local community group. (Naczycz says they’re still in the process of selecting the recipient for this particular tour).

Naczycz hopes that participants will leave his tour with more than just a full stomach.

“We're trying to change people's worldview by going on tours, or at least starting the process, so when they return – whether they’re from the Upper East Side or Carroll Gardens or California – that they think ‘this is how real functioning neighborhoods work, local business is a key part of that, eating a certain way and consuming a certain way creates great places like the one I’ve just seen.’"

"So they are inspired to create that wherever they live," he added.

 

The Eat Like A Local tour is held every Friday and Saturday at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at www.urbanoyster.com and must be booked in advance.

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