by Charlotte Druckman

"We are the only ones left," the chef Anna Klinger reflects from a stool at Al di Là Vino, the bar next door to the trattoria of the same name, which she and her Italian husband Emiliano Coppa opened in Brooklyn's Park Slope nearly 16 years ago. "This stretch of Fifth Avenue was a dicey neighborhood."

She gestures towards an exercise studio down the street and says it used to be a liquor store with a bulletproof glass facade. "Everything else is a nail salon," she says. "But we saw the expansion coming," Coppa chimes in, referring to the subsequent rise of chic outposts and the influx of young families to the neighborhood.

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Source: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/