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Taste of Italy
Merante Gifts has everything you need to create your own Little Italy.
By Scott F. Rosenfeld | Photography by Adam Milliron
Merante Gifts occupies a clean and simple storefront on Liberty Avenue, but crossing the threshold of the small Bloomfield shop, I find myself at once immersed in a vibrant culture that radiates from the four walls around me. Dishes, platters, and other Italian wares occupy the countless shelves around the perimeter of the room with assorted tchotchkes scattered among them, while black and white photos hang from the wall, filled with the kind eyes of a family that could have been my own. The cozy atmosphere is reminiscent of a stay a grandma’s, with the soft lights and inviting scents of home.
For owner Maria Merante, creating a welcoming environment for her customers has been a goal since she first founded the shop in 1983. Merante wanted to bring people together by connecting them to culture that strengthened the family bond. And, like a true Italian, she eventually realized that the best way to do that would be through food.
“People have gotten away from home cooking,” Merante laments. “I think an important way to bring your family closer is to get them around the table and enjoy a good meal together.”
In addition to the Italian gifts and novelties available in the store, Merante has been offering cooking classes in the kitchen above the shop to help spread her love of homecooking. Her students can learn to master a variety of Italian cuisines, with classes in pastamaking and pizzamaking, as well as a class called “Dinner at Nonna’s,” in which Merante works individually through each course of the meal, from antipasti to desserts. In teaching these classes, Merante draws from her own experiences growing up.
“Food is important in an Italian family, and because my father worked in the grocery business we were around it even more than usual,” she recalls. “Being from a large family you learn to cook with minimal ingredients or not the most expensive ingredients. But you can put together a beautiful meal with regular products and with local products as well.”
As if to put that philosophy to the test, a few of the classes Merante teaches this summer will only make use of ingredients picked up at the farmers’ market. Students will get an allowance beforehand to fill their baskets with fresh produce and other local goods and then spend a couple of hours in Merante’s kitchen making them into a meal.
More than anything, Merante wants to show people how easy it can be to use what they have to put together a true family dinner.
“People are intimidated. It’s not a question of wanting to do it — it’s a question of having the time to do it,” she says. “And I think people want to get back to that. And I think we’re helping them do it.”
Merante Gifts, 4723 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. 412.682.3370. www.merante-gifts.com
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Tasty Import
Though Merante loves to buy local when crafting her cuisine, she knows that some of the best ingredients can’t be found in this city, or even this continent. “In cooking, we use only Italian sea salt that comes from Sicily [and]
different Italian tomato products,” Merante says. “Just a variety of things that we think makes a difference in the taste. You have to use quality ingredients, you have to use fresh ingredients, and you can’t be cheap with ingredients.”
Grow Your Own
Merante likes to know exactly where her ingredients come from, so much so that she grows some of her own. “We grow our own herbs with organic seeds from Italy,” she explains. “We don’t plant as many vegetables because we don’t have a whole lot of space, but we’ve done the San Marzano [tomatoes], we’ve done the beans, and we do the herbs. Italians love to plant gardens, and if you have space, they’ll do as much as they can.”
Home Base
“We’ve taken groups to my dad’s hometown, and people like that the best. I try to go every year.” Merante gestures to a framed picture sitting on top of a bookshelf, a panorama of her father’s town that she says customers often mistake for Rome. “There’s a big feast there every September, so if I don’t go with the group at some point in the year, then I always try to get back for that. There’s about a thousand people in my dad’s hometown, but for this festival, everyone goes back, and the town gets up to 15,000 people.”
La Bella Vita
Merante pauses our discussion to attend to a customer in the front of the store, an older Italian man with his wife. “We have a varied group of people who come through these doors,” she tells me after she rings him up and sends him on his way. “We have your typical Italian grandmothers, the younger, more modern generation of people who want to find out more about their heritage, and lots of young people who have traveled to Italy and want to recall some of the things that they experienced while they were there.”
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