But in 2019, Orange’s beer production started up again, this time on a much smaller scale. Instead of a five-story factory spanning hundreds of thousands of square feet, Four City Brewing Co. brews their roughly two dozen seasonal craft beer and hard seltzer varieties in just 4,600 square feet. Four City is located just south of downtown Orange, about four blocks west of the old Rheingold facility, in a mixed-use residential and commercial building constructed in 2014. Within a block and a half of that, seven new residential buildings have risen in the last ten years, several still under construction. They crowd around the Orange train station, having barely anything to do with the busy Main Street just a block away. These buildings—including Four City—are sandwiched between the train line, today New Jersey Transit’s Morris & Essex line, and Interstate 280. Residents can cross the street and get on a train to New York City, or go as far in the other direction to get on route 280, all without needing to interact with the Orange that exists outside that two-block radius. If Four City exists in that context, is it even possible to say that it’s truly in Orange?

Four City’s founders are careful to say in promotional materials that they have deep connections to “the Oranges,” a local slang collective term encompassing Orange, East Orange, West Orange, and South Orange (there is no North Orange). But all three owners are from West Orange, and although it’s only a town over, its median household income is more than three times that of Orange, a meaningful difference. Then again, when Winter constructed the Orange Brewery in 1901, he came into the city from Pittsburgh—not exactly a local. Four City, which doesn’t serve food, does give customers the option of ordering takeout, giving them menus from restaurants nearby at the bar. Still, the distance between Four City’s “Hedison's Phonograph Volume 15” beer (a play on Edison’s Phonograph, as the inventor lived in West Orange) and the delicias Guatemaltecas promised at Eterna Primavera on Main Street is, in reality, much farther than the 1,000 feet that separate the businesses.

Like much of North Jersey, Orange became densely populated in the early 1900s as population spread from bigger cities like Newark. The area, once covered by farmland, was by the second world war populated in large part by owners and managers of factories in Newark, many of them Eastern European and Italian immigrants. Food businesses followed. In the southwestern corner of Orange, a tiny Little Italy sprang up, with several blocks between Essex Avenue and Valley Road hosting a variety of Italian American-owned businesses. Some, including restaurants and a corner store called Joe’s Market, remain today, but most of the Italian and other European communities moved out in the trend of white flight in the 1960s. For the next several decades, Orange’s businesses struggled, culminating in the closure of Rheingold. But shortly thereafter, a new group of immigrants—from the Caribbean, and later South America—began to enter Orange and East Orange, once again bringing their food with them. And as the neighborhoods gentrify, once again, new residents bring in new food businesses.

As the city expanded in the early 1900s, formerly rural areas like Elmora (previously part of a neighboring municipality) developed with residences and businesses. Morris Avenue became an essential thoroughfare, connecting the intersection of two railroads and a main street in northern downtown Elizabeth to the western suburbs. It was home to Elmora’s first grocery store, Febrey Brothers, located at the corner of Morris and Westfield Avenues. Febrey Brothers moved to Elmora as the neighborhood developed from a spot on Broad Street around 1905. And although Febrey Brothers closed long ago, Morris Avenue remains a vital food center for the city. More than 20 Latin American restaurants occupy a two-block stretch—including one in the former Febrey Brothers building. And just two blocks west of Febrey Brothers’ former home, a small store called Caribbean Supermarket made its home in a former car dealership in 2014.

Still, food is far from bountiful in some parts of the city. In Elizabethport, an estimated 20,000 people live in under a square mile. A handful of small restaurants and shops line the streets, which are frequently filled with pedestrians as many residents don’t drive. The insular neighborhood—bounded by water, a highway, and industrial areas, making it hard to get into and out of—is just across the highway from the Wakefern warehouse where hundreds of trucks ship fresh produce and groceries every day. But in an irony repeated in several other neighborhoods across the country, access to fresh food in Elizabethport is severely limited. Two small supermarkets supply a small but complete range of food to port residents, but the two stores combined are still smaller than the size of Elizabethport’s Family Dollar store. The lower-income, predominantly Black and Latino residents of Elizabethport are stuck traveling across the city for a full supermarket, even as trucks supplying hundreds of ShopRite stores pass through their neighborhood daily.

Elizabeth’s identity as a food center was established by its port, and solidified by the many railroad lines and highways that would eventually cross the city. Still, its dearth of food options in some neighborhoods exists for the same reason that its food business thrives: it’s a midway point, the stop on the route between where the produce is grown, frequently in Latin America, and its ultimate destination, frequently several states away. The city’s infrastructure was built around the food trade. But it was built in large part to facilitate food both entering and exiting the city, leaving some neighborhoods behind.

Increasingly, outsiders are recognizing Paterson’s food prowess. Part of this is by design: a 2015 ad campaign connected the landmark waterfall to the city’s food scene, and “Great Falls, Great Food, Great Stories” posters went up at restaurants across the city. Paterson’s mayor–Andre Sayegh, the town’s first Arab mayor–has made it a specific point, too, to emphasize the city’s food scene. He created a food tour of the city with a food writer from a local paper, saying he’s inspired by the likes of Anthony Bourdain, and that Paterson, “may have lost the factories but we still have the great food." Eater describes Paterson’s “hidden gems.” Montclair Local advises its readers in the affluent artsy city of Montclair to travel “just up the Parkway” for a food adventure. Serious Eats admits Paterson might even be worth a trip for New Yorkers. And The New York Times hails the city as “undiscovered.”

Undiscovered by whom? On a Sunday afternoon just before Ramadan, a Palestinian supermarket in South Paterson called Brother’s Produce was so crowded that people lined up down the sidewalk just to enter, filling carts with fresh and dried fruits, nuts, cheeses, and leafy vegetables. Was this an abnormal crowd, preparing for the feast associated with the holiday? “Nah,” said the owner Halema Gaber, who goes by Al, with a laugh. “This is just a regular weekend.”

Brother’s isn’t alone in this neighborhood. Within an easy walk, the Paterson Farmers’ Market has sold produce, meat, and poultry for decades. Al-Hilal Meat & Fish Market and Sultan Supermarket serve the Syrian, Lebanese, Palestinian, and Turkish communities. A SuperFresh supermarket across the train tracks has an average supermarket selection—and a massive halal butcher counter. A former mill building just across the border into Clifton is now occupied in part by the Istanbul Food Bazar.

Still, the explosive growth of Middle Eastern food businesses hasn’t been without its casualties. Around the corner from Brother’s, a large specialty supermarket called Corrado’s Market has stood for decades, long a bastion of the Italian community in South Paterson. Corrado’s, which expanded into a small chain, changed and adapted as the neighborhood changed, too. "It started with tahini," said owner Peter Corrado in an interview with The New York Times in 2005. "Twenty years ago, Turkish immigrants came in looking for it. I had no idea what it was, but we got some. Now we have tahini from two countries." But these days, Corrado’s is a shadow of its former self as shelves empty out, as the store prepares to downsize and incorporate a garden center and beer and winemaking supply store that were previously located in separate buildings. Still, Corrado’s wind-down seems less related to the neighborhood changes and more to bigger struggles: the chain has closed its four other locations and canceled a planned store at the Jersey Shore.

Corrado’s seems to be the exception that proves the rule. All throughout Paterson, food businesses have revitalized the city. In the wholesale sector, a kosher food distributor recently moved from Canada to Paterson. In restaurants, new owners from refugees to local businessmen have opened their own businesses, bringing new life to once-desolate corridors. And local entrepreneurs have also opened grocery stores, filling gaps in underserved neighborhoods.