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Category: Fruits & Veggies [Edit]
Neighborhoods: Meatpacking District, Chelsea14th St-8th Ave (A, C, E, L)
14th St-7th Aves (1, 2, 3, F, V, L)
Mon-Fri. 8:00 a.m. - 9:00 p.m.
Sat. 8:00 a.m. - 8:00 p.m.
Sun. 10:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
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I walked it and saw a worldly plethora of fruits, vegetables, spices, sauces and cheeses. hello, HEAVEN.
With much restraint, I ended up with a garlic clove, large zucchini, and 1/2 lb of mushrooms. (The variety of produce made me nervous about the prices...)
But, you wouldn't even guess what I paid, so I'll just tell you...drumroll please...
$1.99
Not to mention the fact that it's in Chelsea Market and I can easy-breezy pick up (and afford!) some cupcakes on the way out.
It is cash only, but fortunately for us, there's an ATM in the Market
I thought the fruit wasn't fresh because it was Monday.
It sucked on Wednesday. And again on Saturday.
Selection is poor, and its overpriced. Dont give them your hard earned money. Give it to the folks in severe need of dental work on 7th & 17th- they're cheaper, better quality, and sure as hell could use the money.
"Fruit Exchange?" I think they misspelled "Shitty Farmers Market"
Every so often, I shop here to pick up last minute groceries since it's across the street from my work. I don't understand why people (ie. Yelpers) are so excited about this place. It's cash only, which is fine if the stuff was actually cheaper than other places. Their dried goods are actually pretty overpriced. And did anyone notice that they turn the a/c on WAY higher than normal -- so they can keep their produce "fresh" longer than what's normal?
Case in point -- buy some tomatoes from here and you'll notice that they spoil much faster than ones of seemingly the same "freshness" from other grocery stores. If I'm going to pay the same price for produce, I'd rather walk to Whole Foods where at least it lasts a big longer. Better yet, just shop at the greenmarket!
The best reasonably priced vegetable store around.
Absolutely love love this place. This is my one stop shop for all produce and cheese! Everything is super fresh and there is a huge variety. Their selection of mushrooms and cheeses is great. The only downside is that they only take cash.
Holy crap is the produce at MFE friggin ridiculously cheap! How in the hell do they do this in NYC of all places?! I bought a TON of produce here and hardly paid anything for it. This is like NYC's equivalent to PA's Produce Junction.
You can pretty much find anything grown under the sun here, including a very impressive wild mushroom selection, which is also inexpensive. There wasn't anything I couldn't find here. One thing to note though, is that the avocados were a tad over-ripe, so it might be a good idea to steer clear of them. Everything else - veggies, fruits, herbs, spices, foreign cheeses, potatoes, even candies - is all cheap and really fresh. The crazy crowds flowing through this tight space prove it.
The downside is that they only take cash, but the perk is you won't use much of it!
This is a cook's INGREDIENT SANCTUARY!
This is probably one of my most favorite places in the city!
The produce is fresh with tons of fruit and veggie varieties from all over the world at great prices. The spices are great prices as well. You can find everything from apples and oranges to imported cheeses and eclectic cooking oils. You won't be disappointed with this place it's a culinary gem!
**Deal Seeking Diva tip** This place is CASH ONLY! So forget the plastic and bring your paper!
Such a welcome reprieve from D'Ags & the other overpriced produce junk in my neighborhood. I love getting up early on a weekend morning & walking to Chelsea Market for my produce.
Yes, I often then spend like $8 on a milkshake at Ronnybrook, totally negating the savings from my vegetables. So what.
The produce is pretty amazing, especially considering how cheap everything is. I wouldn't recommend buying the Florida avocados there because the few times that I've purchased them from the Fruit Exchange, I opened them and they were rotten.
Two gripes: they only accept cash and it's always SO COLD inside!
Potatoes for 45 cents a pound. Onions for 50 cents a pound. A pint-sized container of fresh rosemary for $1.50. Someone forgot to tell Manhattan Fruit Exchange that it's in Manhattan.
The store is in the heart of the Chelsea Market, a historic indoor shopping mall for food (incidentally, it also seems like a good place to take tourists on a rainy day). Once you find the store, go to the back room for the really cheap stuff. They also have slightly more expensive organic stuff up-front. Great place for huge containers of discounted spices.
Total for the ingredients for a week's worth of recipes: $10.50. Sorry Trader Joe's, but I think you just met your match.
Cash only!
$0.85 for rosemary. Are you kidding me? For 1/3 of the amount I got, I've had to pay $2 in Texas!! The amount of beautiful produce -- seriously, I mean "beautiful" -- is amazing. I braced myself for paying an arm & a leg, cuz I'm used to megamarts -- but for $12, I got a 2.5 lb. butternut squash, a whole mess of green beans, an onion, 1 garlic clove (that might have been a dime, seriously), the above-mentioned rosemary, plus butter and cream (which was higher than I like paying, but maybe that's where the NY $ comes in: $2.59 for 2 sticks and $3.99 for a pint of half-and-half)
Regardless, I knocked out all of my produce + minimal dairy needs for my mini-dinner party (for 3, okay, but still).
They have a bazillion dried spices, it seems, also for a steal -- If only they could add some sugar, I wouldn't have had to stop anywhere else!
Just try to find a tomatillo in this city! Every time a recipe calls for tomatillos, I am stuck. Enter Manhattan Fruit Exchange! I finally found the tomatillos so that I could make a lovely green sauce for enchiladas.
This place goes way beyond fruit...as others have noted, there are tons of bulk spices at very reasonable prices.
Great place for cooks. CASH ONLY!
Did you even know that there are 17 different kinds of potatoes?
Well if you need those or any other fruit of vegetable this is the place to go. Best quality and selection by far in the city and prices better than most. With addition of cheese counter is a convenience and in the Chelsea market makes this a one stop shop.
I could spend hours in here shopping for great ingredients. Go early to avoid the tourist and bring home some goodness
Great selection of fresh fruits and vegetables at much better prices than the bruised, beat-up poor excuses for produce you'd find at places like Gristedes and D'Agostino's.
You'll also find candy, nuts & dried fruits, a small selection of canned goods, and cheeses. The fact that we come all the way from east midtown for this place should say a lot. I only wish I live closer.
The produce is beautiful and very well-priced. Cash only knocks a star off their rating. I know. It's fruits and veggies. You should be able to pay for that in cash, right? When I make the trek out here, though, I stock up.
This place is Candyland for those, like me, that believe fruit and vegetables are nature's candy. It is cheap as hell for NYC, reliable and is always just a wonderful experience. Go, now. Oh and bring cash!
The containers of spices, nuts, seeds and dried fruit are much better priced than general and organic supermarkets. The veges and fruit are fairly priced with a few great deals every visit. The loose salad leaves are cheap for NY; the cherry tomatoes are often $1.99. Not thrilled with their olives. Also cheese, oils, candy.
I once bought dark green French lentils at the Chelsea Market Italian import shop, only to find them much cheaper here. It's that kind of place - deals on obscure stuff. For a smallish shop you can sure stock your fridge. Yey. And they have gorgeous carved pumpkins outside at Hallowe'en.
Cash only.
This place is more expensive than the Greenmarkets around the city, but the variety is better and they have better hours. If I want kumquats, lychees, fiddlehead ferns, baby artichokes, brussels sprouts on the stem, hydroponic lettuce, watercress or any other mildly to almost completely obscure produce, I can get it at Manhattan Fruit Exchange.
The Food Network is their neighbor and all that great looking food you see on the NY based shows? It probably comes from here.
In addition to fantastic fresh produce, they also have dried fruits and veggies, nuts, legumes, a good variety of spices, coffees, hot sauces, juices and a small but respectable cheese case where I got my first taste of Applewood Smoked cheddar. Mmmm...
Cash only. No credit cards. You can fill a large market bag for $20-30.
I work in the area and always find myself in their store for lunch, their salad bar is loaded with fresh fruit and veggies not to mention the guacamole.
The prices are pretty competitive and the produce is usually delicious. I took off a point because I made a trip there for a pumpkin last October and out of hundreds and hundreds of the seasonal squash I couldn't find any that were up to my jack-o-lantern standards!
I need to get a life....this is my last Yelp review for the day. Fruit Exchange is my favorite spot for...you guessed it....fruits & vegetables. Selection is very fresh, great quality and prices are fair (for Manhattan). It gets crowded, but their lines move really fast.
There is one thing drawing me here and that's the variety of nut butters. I've tried almond, pistachio, and cashew, which go for five ounces at $2.79, and they're all fabulous, slightly grainy, and even better warmed up.
As far as everything else is concerned, I would take note of the huge array of spices, pulses, and other grains in the back, as well as a modest but powerful cheese collection and, naturally, the variety of fruits and vegetables. I have not yet purchased any of these yet because of my rather far distance away from Chelsea Market, but perhaps one day I'll cave.
Service is all right, if not a bit dumb.
Good prices. Fresh produce. Cash only.
I love that they have organic mache lettuce. I'm obsessed with mache and Whole Foods Chelsea usually doesn't have it.
BUT ...
Lines can be very long because the cashiers have one speed: SLOW
When it's crowded, the narrow aisles are difficult to navigate
Organic produce selection is limited (no organic berries!) - but they plan to add expand their organic offerings
The last two times I bought almonds here, they were rancid - but the manager cheerfully offered me a refund or exchange
I LOVE mex!! It makes grocery shopping fun and just adds to the whole experience of eating healthy and cooking for yourself. I get all my produce here -- delicious fruits, fresh veggies -- and other healthy products that tend to be hard to find at places like D'ag (gluten-free products, nut varieties, etc.). Plus, after picking up your weekly produce here, you can walk over to The Lobster Place on your way out and pick up fresh, yummy fish too :)
This used to be one of my favorite places in the city for fresh, inexpensive produce. Then on a recent visit, I observed one of their workers standing by the berry display, opening up containers of blackberries and blueberries, weeding out the ones that looked visibly past their prime, throwing those old ones out, and condensing the remaining berries in the containers. Although I had some trepidation, I purchased a few containers of the berries anyway. They were awful - practically liquified. Just because berries aren't moldy doesn't mean they aren't old and past their prime. I thought this was a pretty shady practice. Since then I've been too skeeved out to purchase from Manhattan Fruit Exchange.
Simply the best and cheapest fruit and vegetables in the city, at least outside of farmers' markets. Where else can you find red peppers for under $1 (in season, on special, but still) and onions for 65 cents? Their selection is great, too; they have all the kinds of vegetables you can think of, and then some. I sometimes wish their tomatoes looked a little fresher, though; those I still buy at Union Square.
I have the good fortune to work next door, and it's a good thing that I do: I do just about all of my produce shopping here, and it would be hard for me to go back to normal supermarkets again.
When I worked in Chelsea over the summer, I would come in here and get a fresh peach to go with my lunch every day. The prices are pretty great, especially on large quantities of spices (I was putting together a spice rack and I saved so much!!!). They have a lot of organic and unusual food too.
A couple suggestions though... bring a jacket because this place is like a refrigerator, and also, like Joanna said, bring cash because they don't take credit cards.
Manhattan Fruit Exchange is the only place I've been able to find dried cantelope. Aside from that wondrous find, they have a great selection of dried and fresh fruits, as well as veggies, and spices, and cheeses, and nuts and candy. Unfortunately, they only take cash, so be prepared when you see all the yummy looking fresh produce that you undoubtedly will desire to take home with you. Try the dried cantelope - you won't be sorry!
My reaction to most of the places in Chelsea Market is a resounding "meh." Sure, you can buy cupcakes from 4 different shops without going outside, but is that really worth a trip across town?
Manhattan Fruit Exchange, though, is so worth the trip. It's like the affordable diamond in the overpriced gourmet rough of the market, and it's one of the few places in the city where I'm surprised every time the cashier rings me up - shouldn't I be paying at least twice that much??
They have a really large produce selection including a lot of organic stuff, bunches of fresh herbs for under a dollar each, dried mushrooms, spices, nuts, dried fruits I never knew could be dried (like cantalope, yum), dried beans, and it's all really well-priced... only downside is they don't take credit cards. Bring cash, but you won't need much.
I swoon for the Manhattan Fruit Exchange. It is like a refrigerator in there, and it is cash only. BUT. The produce is gorgeous. It makes me giddy in the way that only bountiful fruits and vegetables can. And they have like twenty different kinds of mushrooms! If you're looking for any kind of obscure produce I'm sure they have it there. I almost bought tamarind pods last time.
by far my new favorite place to buy all of my produce. so cheap - very fresh. beats out the prices of any leading grocery store in the area. for the chelsea market - this has got to be the biggest bargain in the building. veggies for the week generally run me less that $15. try to do that at food emporium!
Worst havarti sample ever. But, kumquats are good, and you can buy them here for cheap.
For the best juice deal in the city, go to the back of the store and seek out the Blueberry Lemonade. Only a buck. Gotta have it.
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