Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Tell your BF that there are millions of Sephardic Jews around the world, and there is a sizable population in NYC. And good advice, company and food are available to anyone - NYC has been known as the melting pot for generations.

Except for staples, I do a lot of traveling by subway, bus or car to restaurants or shopping destinations. I live in a rather staid neighborhood in Queens with just a supermarket and a few grocers, a pizza place and a crappy bakery nearby. Our favorite Thai restaurant (Arharn) is in Astoria, though we do walk about a mile or so to one closer by, Vietnamese (Pho Tay Ho) in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, Italian restaurants (Parkside) in Astoria, Emelia's (in Arthur Ave in the Bronx -we go food shopping there too) and Iavarone's (in Lake Success - they also own a great deli next door) and others, a favorite Mexican Restaurant in East Harlem, Kabul for Afgani (in LI), Peter Luger in Brooklyn, and other restaurants on LI and many others And I regularly schlep to Trader Joe, Whole Foods and Costco in various locations, as well as a Sicilian bakery in Bayside.

I'm lucky because my BF understands this sort food insanity, we like a lot of the same foods, so he gets to enjoy the bounty too. We live in Brooklyn, NY and don't think anything off going into Manhattan on a weekend for brunch. We live about a 35 minute commute into downtown Manhattan, if that is any indication.
If we find a great food store we will travel to it, pretty much until we get tired of it. Luckily we dont own a car, so we have to contain ourselves to only buying small amounts of food at time.
We really like to shop ethnic stores more than large supermarkets. I've been buying meat recently only from the Turkish grocer, for fish we go to the Asian grocer, for cold cuts we go to the Russian deli. Not all of these places are necessarily amazing bargains, but there is something at every place that is so much better than anything else around. Actually the last few Saturdays the BF and I have taken a 20 minute walk to the Chinese bakery to get dough wrapped hot dogs, he is in love with them and has craved them for breakfast.
There is nothing wrong with traveling for food, shopping, dining or whatever else. Most people in the NY boroughs don't have a super market right next to where they live, I sure don't, the closest supermarket is a 15 minute commute on the subway. My entire childhood my parents drove to the supermarket, than the Costco opened in Long Island, so we drove to Costco so we could buy bulk...I guess everyone just draws the line somewhere. How far would you travel? For what items wont you travel?

Absolutely - I'll travel to other farmers markets, since the one in our neighborhood is pretty small. The best fish market is about an hour away. The best Asian grocer is also not in what I'd consider my immediate neighborhood... But it's worth it to me to make the effort, because I don't want to get stuck buying the same blah things from Shaws every week. If traveling to these places is the only way to get the ingredients I need for delicious, varied meals, then so be it!