Ask any lifelong New York chef where to find the city’s authentic Little Italy, and they won’t point you toward the neon signage of lower Mulberry Street. Instead, they will tell you to take the B or D train—or the Metro-North Harlem Line—up to the Belmont neighborhood of the Bronx, where Arthur Avenue and East 187th Street have anchored Italian culinary life for more than a century.

Developed in the late nineteenth century as Italian craftsmen and stonecutters arrived to help construct the neighboring Bronx Zoo and New York Botanical Garden, Belmont remains a working, multi-generational food market rather than a tourist postcard. Here, butchers, bakers, and cheesemakers operate specialty shops dedicated to a single craft.

Begin your pilgrimage at Casa Della Mozzarella at 604 East 187th Street. Step up to the narrow counter and you’ll see Orazio Carciotto and his son Carlo plunging wooden paddles into steaming vats of salted water, stretching and braiding fresh curds by hand into glossy, porcelain-white spheres of fior di latte. Still warm when wrapped in butcher paper, the mozzarella has a milky sweetness and tender snap that supermarket cheese cannot remotely imitate.

Two doors down at 2338 Arthur Avenue, look up inside Calabria Pork Store to behold one of New York’s great edible wonders: a ceiling-wide "chandelier" of hundreds of dry-cured hot and sweet soppressata, salami, and aged provolone wheels suspended overhead to cure. Ask for a taste at the counter while ordering paper-thin prosciutto di Parma.

Across East 187th Street, follow the scent of wood smoke and toasted sesame seeds into Madonia Brothers Bakery (2348 Arthur Ave), whose brick ovens have been firing since 1918. Pick up a warm round of crusty pane di casa, an olive-studded Sicilian loaf, and a couple of fresh cannoli—which the staff only pipes to order with sweet sheep’s-milk ricotta so the shells stay shatteringly crisp.

Before heading home, duck inside Borgatti’s Ravioli & Egg Noodles (632 E 187th St, operating since 1935) to watch fresh sheets of golden egg pasta fed through vintage brass rollers and hand-cut to your preferred width, then browse the historic indoor Arthur Avenue Retail Market—opened by Mayor Fiorello La Guardia in 1940—for an espresso and an imported Italian soda among the produce stalls.