Tears were shed when Terranova Supermarket closed last spring, marking the end of 100 years in business. People gathered to watch as its proprietors locked the small grocery's front door one last time and then walked out the back door and into retirement.
Less than three months later, some of the same people waited outside again under the oaks lining Esplanade Avenue to be the first customers at Terranova's Meats. It’s a new butcher shop located in a portion of the old grocery in Faubourg St. John, and it’s the next-generation reboot of a treasured neighborhood institution.
As a grocery, Terranova harked back to an old way of doing business, one at odds with the era of big box retail and contactless delivery. Customers and shopkeepers took time to chat about family, life, good food and the star-crossed Saints. Children were indulged (and sometimes corrected). It could seem like a visit as much as an errand. Time slowed down and felt well-spent.
It was a family run grocery run by exactly four family members, and half of them, the parents, were ready to retire. But the other half, the next generation, had a new plan. They divided up the old grocery and built a new, smaller, specialized business around its butcher counter.
It is once again filled with stuffed pork chops and chickens, cuts of steaks and hamburger patties, all arrayed with reverential order on sheets of butcher paper. There is hogshead cheese again, and stuffed artichokes.
But Terranova is best known for its sausage, and the new butcher shop means this is back in steady supply, the green onion, the hot and the Italian, to name the Terranova tryptic, from recipes going back to the old days.
The mood on opening day for Terranova’s Meats was jubilant. Too often, we have to watch as heritage businesses and pieces of community life slip away, whether through changes in industries or trends or the march of time. But here is one that has built back on its own terms, rekindling a connection that runs through families, a link to the past and some really delicious sausage.
