Grab a sandwich, and practice your Portuguese, too

I first discovered Granny’s Grocery Store in Hermosa Beach the day I moved into a weather-beaten beach house on a nearby alley street.  My roommate Marchand and I had hauled the last of our mass-produced Scandinavian pressboard furnishings up a set of rickety wooden stairs and collapsed on the stained carpeting of the rented shack we would call home for the next two years.

It was well past the lunch hour and we were too exhausted to clean up, get in the car and go grocery shopping. Marchand recalled seeing a little grocery store around the block, so we decided to walk over and at least buy some basic food pantry staples.

Granny’s did not disappoint. We were greeted by the affable, surfer-dude looking owner, Andre, who does indeed surf and turned out to be a native of  Brazil. Indeed, Granny’s is bedecked with a generous array of Brazilian flags, photos and other memorabilia from the South American nation. Marchand developed an instant crush on Andre, while I was excited to find someone upon whom I could unleash my fledgling Portuguese.  Prior to moving into the drafty beach house, I had spent two weeks in Brazil visiting relatives in San Paulo and had managed to learn enough Portuguese to carry on a basic conversation. I was still experiencing saudades (a wonderful Portuguese word for a sentiment akin to nostalgia) and missing the warmth and happiness of my Brazilian family, so it was comforting to know that a little slice of Brazil was just steps away from my paint-chipped front door.

The retail space in Granny’s is probably no more than 15 x 20 square feet, but it’s packed with everything one would need for a trip to the beach (Granny’s was the midpoint between the sandy shores of Hermosa Beach and our weather-beaten beach shack) as well as the basic necessities every thirty-something beach city resident would need–milk, bread, cereal, laundry detergent and an ample selection of wines.

But the section of Granny’s that keeps me going back to this day is the little deli counter at the back of the store, usually staffed by two Brazilian women who make the best sandwiches in this part of town. A “Longboarder” sandwich–a flaky French baguette chock full of turkey, cheese, avocado, lettuce, tomatoes and alfalfa sprouts–was just what Marchand and I needed after our taxing move-in.

Over the course of the next two years, Granny’s became an essential part of our weekend beach ritual, and Andre became Marchand’s de facto counselor. Miserable in her Van Nuys teaching job, she would often find herself confiding in Andre about her career woes. Although I was never present for these sessions, Marchand raved about the perspective Andre would offer, and how she always felt better after a trip to Granny’s.

For me, Granny’s was my go-to source when I found myself lacking for wine or crackers at the last minute before friends were expected at the house. And on the days I felt brave, I would head over and strike up a conversation in Portuguese with one of the many native Brazilian staff, who were always gracious and encouraging.

It’s been a good 10 years since I lived around the corner from Granny’s. I got married five years ago, and my husband and I coincidentally bought a home close enough to Granny’s that we often walk there to buy sandwiches before hitting the beach. My husband has bonded with Andre over surfing, and while I am more shy these days about subjecting anyone to my Portuguese, I still wax nostalgic over Brazil every time I stop by Granny’s en route to the beach.

Marchand and I have remained friends after our harrowing two years in the shabby little beach house beseiged by waterbugs, nasty drafts and loud parties across the alley. She moved to Istanbul four months ago. Two days before she flew to Turkey, she visited me in Hermosa Beach and we did one last “for-old-times’-sake” trip to Granny’s en route to the beach. Andre was not working that day, but we bought a Longboarder, two bottles of water and some chips.  On that incredibly brilliant late-summer day, we shared our sandwich while staring out at the unusually turquoise-blue ocean, a fitting celebration of Marchand’s new life ahead and a tribute to a friendship that began 10 years before in the little beach town I still call home.

What $10 Buys:

A “Longboarder” sandwich, a bag of Sun Chips and a large bottled water.

You say mercado, I say a window into new cultures

My father’s fascination with markets most likely predates my 4o-something existence. Before you conjure images of a shirt-and-tie, Wall Street Journal-reading kind of dad, allow me to set the scene by stating that the markets my immigrant father is obsessed with are the ones that, simply stated, sell food. Not just corn flakes and pop tarts, but salty, eggplant-colored Peruvian olives. Flaky, sticky baklavah. Succulent carnitas. And let’s not forget the razor-thin slices of mortadella, soppressata and salami. I am the proud bearer of my father’s market-mesmerized DNA.

Growing up in Anaheim, California in the early seventies, my parents were the only Latino immigrants in a tract of  1960s-era triplex and courtyard apartments that was razed last month to make way for a new school complex.

2155 Mountain View Avenue is now a dirt lot, as is the entire block where we lived. The liquor store around the corner–my own earliest market obssession–also is gone, but more on that later.

My fondest memories of 2155 Mountain View, apartment 2, involve my construction worker dad coming home around 3 in the afternoon, his black hair peppered with dried cement granules, his boots covered with a fine layer of cement dust. He usually carried one or two paper grocery sacks, and when he bent down to kiss me, I was met with a familiar melange of construction dust and what I would later call “Italian Deli Aroma,” or  a heady blend of fresh-baked bread, pungent sheeps’ milk cheese and seasoned, cured cold-cuts. To this day, whenever I poke my head into an Italian deli, the unique combination of food scents makes me feel as if I’ve just stepped into the kitchen of my childhood home.

Dad was held in thrall not just by ethnic delicatessens and Mexican carnicerias, but by the neighborhood chain grocery store, as well. In the Anaheim of the 1970s, Market Basket was our local grocery store. Today it is a Von’s. A grocery trip that would take the average person about 20 minutes to complete would take my father at least three times that long, if not longer. In the days before cell phones, my mother would pace our tiny kitchen, wringing her hands and fretting that some horrific fate had befallen my father. Worrying about her family meeting some grisly end was–and continues to be–my mother’s favorite hobby. 

I remember one day when I was in high school my dad came home from one of his marathon shopping trips with, among scores of other items, three cans of frozen Donald Duck brand orange juice. He held one can up, pointing at the logo with the duck’s face prominently featured and said with combined disgust and amazement, “Can you believe what these companies will do to get people to buy their products?”

This incident was the seed from which sprung my own cynicism about marketing tactics, an irony of the most delicious kind, given that the same seed has borne an entire career dedicated to PR and marketing.