All the flavors of Portugal are guest columns available at Fall River’s Portugal Marketplace.
On a recent visit to an extensive textile factory that a decade ago was remodeled, polished and ample stocked and opened as Portugalia Marketplace, my neighbor and friend Maria de Simos Ventura, or simply Maria, was my companion and gastronomic guide. , a Portuguese food, wine and ceramics emporium, Fall River, Mass.
Born in São João da Madeira, about 30 miles from Porto, the main city in northern Portugal, Maria immigrated with her mother, father and brothers in 1971, first living in New York – Yonkers – then in the interior of the state. . Elmira, where other family members lived.
As he approaches 60 years of age, his life story has many flavors, flavors and exotic spices and spices, candy bars, savory delicacies and all the allure of adventure. A great Portuguese food emporium.
For Maria, he studied in Elmira and later in Ithaca, dropping out before graduating, but later returning to Portugal, combining his family’s knowledge of leather to work as a representative of a dozen shoe companies; she was married a few times, including to a Norwegian hockey player; raising three children; she owns three jewelry stores (turquoise) and ceramics and accessories stores in Newport and Massachusetts; Store selling stores divorced her husband, Groton who employed her once more famously online, after her more famous family, her leave of absence at the Elizabeth Arden salon at the Foxwood Marriott for a show in the US, and finally, four decades ago, to Mystic River Hair & Nails in Mystic, today. He’s in a chair.
We have traveled several times to Terceira, one of the islands, large islands, explored in the Atlantic Ocean belonging to Portugal, grilled octopus fish, and meats. And visits have been made even tastier by the mild government, Portuguese government-sponsored, and hotel stays, with a week and return from Boston costing around $50 or a little more than a historic stay. The inn overlooks the port of the capital, Angra do Heroísmo.
Here was the opportunity to relive those visits on a trip through Fall River to a market opened by a family from the Azores. It didn’t matter. I was content to watch Maria shop and hear stories about her childhood dinners and the taste of pastries, pasta de nata, Portuguese pastel de nata, often toasted in the crown with cinnamon. She the first.
The Portugal Marketplace was the brainchild of Michael Benewitz, who arrived in Fall River from the Azores in 197999, with many other islands. According to a story published by the Rhode Island Monthly in May 2018, Benevides’ father started selling coffee in Fall River in 1988 and later expanded his bay garage into a wholesale food business.
Demand grew, the business found a bigger niche, and Benewhites created a market. They a discovery planted the sale on Bedford Street in the Old Mill District, bought it in 2011, opened two years of renovating it and opened the market in 2013.
He was determined to provide the Portuguese community with the homeland they remember back, but also with the flavors of modern Portugal.
After a light lunch of ham and chorizo and cheese sandwiches at the market café, we venture into a world of plenty.
Maria found a way to display tremokos, peanut colored bits, the perfect snack for beer, peanuts and usually served with drinks and olives. She bought a pitcher.
Then, butcher’s counters, both smoked with a blend of spices, made with bovine tripe and the last one, thinner than sauerkraut, made with pork tripe. The sausages are in Fall River – not through the market – and in New Jersey, which has a large Portuguese population.
The market offers maybe 20 different versions, both mild and warm, and cured cousins, long, short, or stubby, almost all for less than $10 a pound.
Maria went to an exhibition of cheese wheels from the Azores (São Jorge) and the mainland, and said that the sheep from the north of Portugal were raised in the mountains. Make these cheeses.
In Norway, inside a glass-enclosed refrigerated room that extends to the main shopping area of the market, desaturates of salted loaves (worn and processed in Iceland and Iceland, oncelin patiently, are fished, stews and soups. Maria said that Norwegian cod was finer than Portuguese pagoda – “much finer”, in her opinion.
Above those rooms, frozen octopus and squid and sardines and smells and clams and vats of assorted sea fish, and canned sardines and anchovies and mackerel and tuna on the table.
Maria Aletria bought a large package of capellini, which she said was used to make a perfect sweet pastry, like rice pudding, during the holidays.
As she enters a room found as a store hello and hello, and enters as a green price shop from princely to commoner, a cellar store cellar, including Portuguese honey. A rugby ball, vegetables, bread counter and, as mentioned before, towers of spicy barrels of spices, olives, nuts and candies, imported chocolates and pots of hot sauce.
I will say it heartily, the market is at the exit doors: “Thank you”.
Steven Slosrk lives in Stonington [email protected].