by Helen Zelon

The salad bar: A new feature at the Fine Fare

ixty-six kinds of beer, including brews from Mexico, Japan, Germany and designer microbreweries in the US and Canada. Organic food, a fresh salad bar, dozens of imported cheeses, fancy mushrooms, farm-fresh produce… Hungry yet? If all this bounty conjures visions of uptown shopping – think Gourmet Garage, Fairway, or the late, lamented Balducci's - reconsider. It's all right here, close to home, at the Fine Fare market, managed with tough-love tenderness by David Vargas.

The baby-faced Vargas has been minding the store for 10 years now. The old owners had given up on the place, he says. "They didn't think the store would last, the neighborhood was changing so much. They gave us six months!" A decade later, Vargas stands proud, and the store is thriving..

Responding to the needs of an evolving community is Vargas' first priority. He shows off vast banks of fancy fresh foods - swaths of leafy greens on ice, Portobellos stacked like Frisbees, organic produce from faraway farms - along with careful pyramids of apples and oranges, potatoes and onions, mango and jicama. When he came to the store, Vargas says, the produce section was miniscule, crammed into a space no more than 20x15 feet..

"There was a need to grow," he explains, as he walks through the 3,000 square feet currently devoted to fresh food. "As the neighborhood changed, we needed to change, too. We got the Pom pomegranate concentrate, that's the big thing now," he says, "and of course the tofu, right?".

Vargas isn't much of a tofu aficionado himself, preferring more traditional fare, some of which his staff cooks fresh for sale at the newly refurbished deli counter. Close by, a new salad bar - with no fewer than eleven dressings - lets patrons combine their favorite foods into healthy, fresh meals. Soup's coming soon, says Vargas, right in time for chilly winter afternoons.

Every aisle shows evidence of the varied local population. When Vargas added soy and organic products to the dairy case, sales took off - YoBaby yogurt's a huge seller. The organic section, which began as two linear feet of shelf space, soon grew to five feet, then ten. "Now we're out to here, at 15 feet and growing," says Vargas, as we tour the aisles.

"People here can be critical; they can be demanding. The neighborhood is tough," he says, smiling, running his hand across his forehead. "I came here with a whole head of hair." It's a neighborhood of extremes – young, old, hip, workingclass, well-heeled and close to the bone; black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Jewish, vegan-organic and easy-Mac fans. Shoppers talk to him, says Vargas. His job is to respond.

"A lot of senior citizens' home attendants are Jamaican. I got complaints, I gotta' bring in Jamaican products." And just like the neighborhood, the pigeon peas and jerk sauce – island staples – stand next to the organic grains and pasta, and down the aisle from the kosher products, one big mix of tastes, lifestyles, cultures, and cuisines.

In the mood for Mexican food? Check out the 50+ varieties of spices, from pumpkin seeds (toasted and green) to orange leaves; spicy hot garbanzos and fava beans; hibiscus flowers and camomile and spearmint for tea; plump, dark tamarind pods and six kinds of dried chile peppers. Fatback and pigs feet crowd the refrigerated meat case, sharing space with twelve kinds of bacalao (dried salt cod, popular in Carib, Hispanic, and Italian cuisine) along with smoked ham hocks, turkey wings, and pork neck bones. It may be local, but it's a world-tour of gastronome, from the heights of organic delicacy to down-home cooking. Dig in, and enjoy.

Fine Fare, 175 Clinton Street, (corner of Grand), 212-477-5121, Mon-Sat: 7am- 9pm, Sun: 7am-8pm