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Bronx

Morris Park

Brick-oven pies and Calabrian red sauce at one end of the avenue, Yemeni lamb and maraq at the other.

Photo: Adam Moss · CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr

Morris Park is a neighborhood of two-family houses and tidy front stoops in the East Bronx, built on the ground of a vanished racetrack and long known as one of the city's Italian-American strongholds. Its main streets, Morris Park Avenue and Williamsbridge Road, are still lined with pork stores, pastry shops and dining rooms where three generations share a table on Sunday.

Follow Morris Park Avenue west under the elevated 2 and 5 and you cross into Van Nest, the older of the two communities, and into what everyone now calls Little Yemen: Yemeni restaurants, sweet shops and cafés clustered around White Plains Road and Rhinelander Avenue, busiest after evening prayers. The first of them opened in 2008; today they set the avenue's late-night rhythm.

Eat both ends in a day. A hero at a deli that has drawn weekend lines since 1978, a long Italian dinner in a brick-walled room the MICHELIN Guide keeps in its selection, and on another visit a stone bowl of fahsah and a cup of maraq a few blocks away. It is not a sightseeing neighborhood — it is a place where people eat well and argue about where to eat better.

Brick-oven pies and long Italian menus on Morris Park Avenue

Weekend lines at a Williamsbridge Road deli since 1978

Little Yemen around White Plains Road and Rhinelander Avenue

Two-family houses on streets laid over an old racetrack

Local notes

A racetrack under the houses

The neighborhood takes its name from Morris Park Racecourse, a thoroughbred track that operated from 1889 to 1904 and hosted the Belmont Stakes from 1890 through 1904. The land was later carved into the residential blocks you walk today.

Little Yemen

At Morris Park Avenue's western end, in Van Nest, Yemeni-owned restaurants, cafés and sweet shops cluster near White Plains Road. Arth Aljanatain, the first Yemeni restaurant here, opened in late 2008 on the ground floor of a building that also holds a mosque; it is busiest after prayers.

Van Nest and Morris Park

Van Nest is the older of the two neighborhoods, by about twenty years; Bronxdale Avenue and White Plains Road roughly mark where one becomes the other. Morris Park Avenue runs through both and is the best street to walk.

Through the lens

The avenue is all storefronts and signage — shoot it in late-afternoon side light, or at dusk when the Yemeni cafés near White Plains Road light up under the elevated tracks. The residential side streets, with their stoops and small gardens, are quiet in the morning. Ask before photographing people at prayer times near the mosque.

Editorial draft — core details last reviewed October 19, 2026. Confirm practical details with the official site before you go.

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