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Twelve years ago, Adam Sudmann sat in his Brooklyn apartment sketching out models for a multinational food hall. And on Friday, those sketches will come to fruition in downtown Syracuse.

Salt City Market, at 484 South Salina Street, is set to open at 11 a.m. on Friday and features food vendors with cuisines from around the world. The market was designed to model various food halls across the country and has 11 different food vendors.

Sudmann said that the market wouldn’t have been created without the Allyn Family Foundation. The foundation created the Syracuse Urban Partnership for projects like Salt City Market, and about a quarter of the foundation’s endowment went to the project.

The vendors are mostly comprised of startup businesses. Each one had to go through a competitive process to be selected for the market. Miss Prissy’s, one of the selected vendors, is a soul food catering company that has been in business for 17 years, but has never had a brick-and-mortar location. However, owner Dreamer Glen said with Salt City Market opening, she’ll finally be able to man her own storefront and cook traditional soul food.

“I’m excited to share the gift that was given to me to the city of Syracuse. That’s what matters to me the most,” she said. “We want to be a little ray of sunshine sitting in the heart of downtown Syracuse.”

Firecracker Thai Kitchen is one of 11 vendors featured at Salt City Market. Sarah Slavin | Senior Staff Writer

Sleyrow Mason, owner of SOULutions Southern Cuisine, said that he is also looking forward to cooking for Syracuse residents in his own space. For the last 18 years, Mason has worked in various restaurants in and around the city, but opening up his own Southern style restaurant has always been his dream.

When he was 5 years old, Mason began cooking Southern food with his mother. But when she passed away in 2002, Mason began cooking all of her recipes as a way to bring his family together on holidays and important events.

Mason is able to take his experience from working at various restaurants and apply it to traditional Southern methods of cooking to elevate soul food to another level, he said. The name for the restaurant came to him about 10 years ago when he decided that he would put his own twist on southern style cooking at his eatery.

Sleyrow Mason has worked at various restaurants around Syracuse for 18 years. Now, he’s opening his own southern style restaurant. Sarah Slavin | Senior Staff Writer

Just around the corner from SOULutions is Cake Bar, a dessert stand run by Duyen Nguyen, which features speciality cakes, cupcakes and bubble tea. Nguyen moved from Vietnam to the U.S. eight years ago, and much of the food she makes is influenced by Vietnamese cuisine.

Nguyen wants to promote food and drinks that she actually enjoys in her everyday life. One way she accomplished this is through her decision to only add tapioca balls in her bubble tea because she prefers them to other flavored balls that are commonly served in bubble tea. What makes her bubble tea different is that it is made from tea leaves instead of a powder and that it comes out of a tap, she said.

Another vendor with drinks on tap is Salt City Coffee and Bar. Unlike the company’s first location on Onondaga Street, this one turns into a full bar at night, said Jake Pusey, the location manager for Salt City Coffee. The cafe is open from 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. and then reopens as a bar at around 11 p.m.

Ahead of the opening, Salt City Coffee has been developing new recipes such as coffee cocktails, coffee mocktails and cereal milk lattes. Developing the new location has been exciting for Pusey, but he said he’s most excited for what the market will mean for the city.

“This is such a huge thing and it is going to be so huge for the city,” Pusey said. “I’m just so excited to be part of it.”

The market has not only become a place for new restaurants but has also created new partnerships. The vendor Juice + Flowers will sell flowers, juice and fresh food. Abigail Henson, owner of Farm Girl Juicery, and Lindsey Jakubowski, owner of Catalpa Flower Farm, will run the shop. The two have worked together for years but decided to combine to create the business when they heard about the market.

Abigail Henson (left) and Lindsey Jakubowski have collaborated together for years. With Salt City Market opening, they combined their two businesses together to create Juice + Flowers, which sells flowers, juice and fresh food. Sarah Slavin | Senior Staff Writer

In addition to the food hall, 26 apartment units sit above the market that contain mixed income housing. Construction for the building was able to resume last spring because it was deemed an essential service due to the provision of mixed-income housing, said CJ Butler, marketing and communications specialist for the market.

In March, the Syracuse Cooperative Market is opening a store in the market which will be downtown’s only supermarket. The store will carry more than the current location on Kensington Road. The co-op will sell non-organic and organic food, which Butler considers especially important in the market’s effort to be inclusive.

Salt City Market will also be a place for the community to come together through cooking classes and a community room that is in the process of being built. The community room will be available for people to rent out to host various events such as yoga classes, but this probably won’t happen until COVID-19 restrictions are looser and more people have vaccines, Butler said.

The market will be open for takeout and curbside pickup, but Sudmann said he is unsure about indoor dining, as it will all be dependent on state the county guidelines. However, it could change day to day.

Sudmann said that he is very grounded and composed for Friday’s opening, but he’s most excited for the market to be a place to bring all walks of life together.

“It’s really important that we have spaces that welcome people from lots of different walks, experiences, different parts of the economic stratum because we don’t do that particularly well in Syracuse,” Sudmann said. “And I think that we’re robbing something from ourselves by not sharing spaces.”

Published on January 25, 2021 at 12:46 am

Contact Sarah: srslavin@syr.edu