The Manhattan Times

Talking live turkey in Inwood

by Adam Garrett-Clark

Thousands of live turkeys are set to invade Northern Manhattan in the coming weeks.

With the approach of the holidays, the live chicken market industry, based in east Inwood, will see some of its biggest business of the year, and Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the vivero’s busy season.

Last year at Vivero Los Primos #2 on Post Avenue near W. 207th Street Owner Pedro Enrique said he sold nearly 1,000 turkeys in the week leading up to the holiday.

Nearby on 10th Avenue and W. 206th Street, La Granja Live Poultry #1 is typically so busy during the third week of November that it extends its hours. Turkey buyers begin lining up before the store is open, said manager Adalice Nunez. Last year the market stayed open until 10 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, she remembers.

Enrique’s market, the biggest of the three in Inwood, gets so many flapping gobblers inside his facility the week before Thanksgiving that he has to improvise to store them. To make room, Enrique uses stacked cages to create a makeshift pen for the turkeys to roam at liberty – inadvertently turning them into free-range turkeys. To promote his turkeys, Enrique usually has flyers distributed throughout Washington Heights and Inwood, stuffed under doors and in hands on the street. He also buys time on the local cable television channels.

Often found in immigrant centers throughout the city where the population is used to eating freshly killed meat, live poultry markets draw their stock of animals from a web of farms on the East Coast, depending on which has the best prices at the time. Farms from as far as North Carolina make deliveries to these markets daily.

“I never thought a business like this would make money,” Nunez said, who began working for the family business about a year ago. “I mean a lot of people buy chicken,” she said.

Of the roughly 250 customers that come into his market each day, Enrique said 90 percent of them are women and 95 percent are Dominican. 

“No me gusta el pollo del super mercado [I don’t like the chicken from the supermarket],” Sandra Mendoza said while purchasing two small brown chickens at Vivero Los Primos #2 on a recent afternoon. Mendoza goes to the market at least four times a week she said.

The amount of variety available is overwhelming. Like a pet store, stacked metal cages house birds of all shapes and feather. Roughly 17 different choices are available, everything from tiny white doves to large roosters. The most popular, aside from chickens, according to Enrique, are gallina and guinea. 

Nunez explains that most of these alternative species are slightly more expensive but provide a different flavor. Everyone has their own preferences, she said, “It’s all about the flavor.”

The majority of these alternatives, like the gallina, are kept alive longer than regular chicken, which toughens the meat and requires longer cook times. This makes them ideal for stews and soups, Nunez said, adding that customers also believe the flavors used in the sauces stick to these meats better.

Guinea, a black bird with a round body and white spots, has a better flavor than chicken, Mendoza says confidently. “Bueno depende la que cocinen, [well depending on who’s cooking],” she clarifies. Mendoza usually cooks it in a sauce made of wine, lemon and garlic. The bird is very popular for New Years Eve, Nunez added.

But these options are usually saved for special occasions, customer Audrey Rodriguez explains, as she buys a gallina for a dinner to welcome the visit of her sister-in-law from Miami.

Rodriguez, who says she usually visits the market once a week, explained that there are some drawbacks to shopping at a live poultry market. Sometimes it’s just more convenient to go to the store, she said.

Buying your meat at a live poultry market does reintroduce reality to the process.

After a customer selects a bird and it is weighed, it is taken to a back room where it is killed, de-feathered, and gutted – a process that takes 10 to 15 minutes.

The air inside the market is often thick with a barnyard stench. And if the smell doesn’t get to you, the sights and sounds of hundreds of squawking birds might. Some animal rights activists have called for closing the markets.

Ironically Nunez, who can discuss the differences in flavor of almost every bird for sale in her market, speaks from second-hand knowledge. She is a vegetarian.

Growing up in her family’s restaurant business, seeing so much meat constantly being prepared, she said she just got turned off, “ewww,” she said. “I still can’t watch the killing.”