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Starliner Cafe to Bring 'Little Daily Farmer’s Market' to Prospect-Lefferts

 The new Starliner Cafe and Market opened this week at Nostrand Avenue and Hawthorne Street in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.
The new Starliner Cafe and Market opened this week at Nostrand Avenue and Hawthorne Street in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens.
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DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith

PROSPECT-LEFFERTS GARDENS — A taste of the Catskills has come to Prospect-Lefferts Gardens this week with the opening of a new cafe and market committed to bringing farm-raised and locally-sourced products to the neighborhood, its owner said.

The Starliner Cafe and Market opened its doors Monday on the corner of Nostrand Avenue and Hawthorne Street, serving coffee, tea, bagels and some grocery items like sodas, yogurt, granola bars and pints of Blue Marble ice cream.

But owner Isaac Peachin said he hopes to bring a lot more to the 1,000-square-foot store in the coming months, offering cheese, meat, eggs and seasonal produce from farms in upstate New York, including from his family’s own 150-year-old farm, the Star Route Farm in Schoharie County, where he grew up.

“The way I think about it is, this is your little daily farmer’s market that’s open every day,” he said of the shop.

Peachin has lived in Brooklyn for years, and in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens with his family since 2012, but has a deeply rooted connection to the Catskills, where he says new farms are sprouting up all the time, fueled by customers’ interest in the sourcing of their food.

“We’re past that tipping point of people wanting to know where their food comes from — the local food movement — and when I first moved back here [to Brooklyn], I was like ‘I want to get into local food distribution.’ That seemed like the biggest challenge,” he said.

Already, Starliner carries a Catskill-based tea, Tay Tea, and coffee roasted in Bushwick by Caffe Vita. Soon to come will be regionally-sourced honey, maple syrup, bread, grass-fed beef and even Thanksgiving turkeys, he said. A breakfast and lunch menu, too, is in development with sandwiches, salads and soups, all of which he hopes will be both healthy and “decadent.”

“I’m not one of those health food nuts. I respect vegan and gluten-free and everything, but I just love good food,” he said.

The Starliner Cafe and Market is open at 1206 Nostrand Ave. from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends, Peachin said. For more information, visit the store’s website.