Karen King is reopening Alleva Dairy, America’s oldest cheese shop, this Sunday inside Chelsea Market after losing her Little Italy location of 130 years.
King, a native of Whitestone, Queens, bought the original Mulberry Street store in 2014 with her late husband, John “Cha Cha” Ciarcia, a “Sopranos” actor known as the “Unofficial Mayor of Little Italy,” from Robert Alleva whose family’s fifth generation no longer wanted to run it. Ciarcia died just a year later, leaving King, a professional singer, to operate the business with her nephew, Sean Wilson.
The shop closed in March 2023 after King fell behind on rent payments due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but she reached an agreement with landlord Jerome G. Stabile III Realty that allowed her to break her lease without paying back rent.
“This is like the feast every day here in Chelsea Market,” King told The Post of the food hall, which draws over 6 million visitors annually. “Little Italy was mostly Italian, this is international. Chelsea Market is a place where people come from all over the world and you experience all the different heritages and foods that they bring. I feel like I’ve been raised up coming here. I feel like my brand means something now.”
The new location marks a pivot from the grocery store model toward more prepared foods, with a menu of 13 signature sandwiches crafted by chef Carlo Palandri, who hails from Livorno, Tuscany.
Among the offerings is the “Cha Cha,” which King created in honor of her husband, filled with mortadella — his favorite cold cut — plus provolone, crushed pistachios and Dijon mustard. “My husband loved mortadella and I love pistachios, so I added those,” she said.
Other sandwiches include the “Siciliana” with caponata, stracciatella and arugula, and the “Il Toscano,” named for Palandri’s region, featuring housemade porchetta, roasted garlic cream and sharp provolone. The shop will also serve classic Italian entrees including ravioli alla vodka, rigatoni bolognese and gnocchi marinara, plus cannoli and tiramisu for dessert.
King’s customer base has long included celebrity regulars such as Chazz Palminteri, Vincent Pastore, Michael Imperioli, Vin Diesel, former Mayor Bill de Blasio and Sebastian Maniscalco.
Although the shop’s iconic 15-foot street sign is still in storage, King was able to hang the original signs from the store, which are over a century old. “And we kept the phone number,” she added.
King said loyal customers have been eagerly awaiting the reopening for three and a half years. “People came yesterday when I was putting this sign up and they were from the neighborhood and they were screaming and saying how much they missed Alleva. I told them, ‘We’re opening Sunday,’ and they said, ‘Will you give us a break?'” King recalled, laughing.
“And an Italian man came two days ago, he said that when he was five years old, he used to go to the store, and he was kissing my hand and he goes, ‘You are so brave.’ I said, ‘I’m not brave. We belong here.'”
The path to Chelsea Market was not direct. After shuttering the original, King initially reconsidered the food hall’s offer when Jack Morris, co-owner of the Hard Rock Hotel in Atlantic City, proposed a New Jersey location with potential expansion to 30 stores, but she rejected the contract terms.
King said she speaks regularly with her late husband about the new venture and believes he sends signs of approval. One arrived in January 2024, when the Little Italy building that had housed Alleva partially collapsed due to an illegal renovation, leading to demolition — on the same day as “The Sopranos” 25th anniversary party at Da Nico Ristorante next door. “It all came down and now we’re building here,” she said. “Isn’t that unbelievable?”