Saying goodbye to Pusateri's grocery in Yorkville

That was the requiem in the air when I arranged to meet Craig Patterson in Yorkville this week, inside the deluxe grocery. Just days prior, he had actually broken the story on his site Retail Insider that the store was closing soon after more than 20 years, and it occurred to me we oughta talk. So here we were, playing meet-cute near the quiche, ducking a parade of various late-afternoon customers in the notoriously tight space.

- SHINAN GOVANI

Pusateri's started as a wee produce market when Salvatore Pusateri, pictured, and his wife, Rosaria, immigrated to Canada from Sicily in 1957.

Arrivederci, Pusateri’s.

“Crazy transformation happening in the neighbourhood,” he started to say. A word he would return to again and again during our hour-plus chat: transformation, transformation, transformation.

And Patterson would know, being the plucky founder of a site since 2012 that has become indispensable for retail voyeurs and real-estate hounds, not to mention close watchers of the mighty Bloor-Yorkville nabe.

In this tony postal code of shoppers, tourists and gourmands, the end of Pusateri’s seemed to me seismic — even in an area where there have been umpteen changes. It had apparently declined to renew its lease at the corner of Bay and Yorkville (although the quintessentially Toronto grocer will continue in its other locations, including an upcoming new store in Little Italy, all the culmination of something that started as a wee produce market when Salvatore and Rosaria Pusateri immigrated to Canada from Sicily in 1957).

When the Yorkville location opened back in 2003 — complete with valet service and the finest products — it was a very big deal, as I reminded Patterson. This was a time before burrata was on every menu in every resto and mainstream gluttons were only just starting to clue into the lure of San Marzano tomatoes. The store itself: often a who’s who of Toronto and celebrities filming in the city (and often bunking in the area). I remember seeing Daniel Craig here! Julianne Moore! Will Ferrell! Jamie Oliver once showed up. Claire Danes and her husband, Hugh Dancy, ambled through its aisles, baby in tow.