Serving the Haberfield community and beyond for just shy of 20 years, this small but mighty gourmet grocer is a celebration of the downright delicious. Manager Dorothy’s passion for quality foods is infectious.
"Everything you see here we’ve tried and can 100 per cent back and say it’s excellent," she tells us. "We know and meet the producers and eat this food at home ourselves."
Rather than endless aisles of chock-full shelves, it’s a tightly curated affair here. There is fresh pasta from Pasta Gallery (a longtime pasta maker based in Hornsby), a range of pasta sauces by chef Luca Ciano, stuffed olives from Marrickville and exceptional puff pastry by Carême (“It’s the only pre-made pastry that’s on par with making it yourself – they use real butter, not pastry butter,” Dorothy explains).
You may recognise the range of vacuum-sealed deli meats up the back – it’s Paesenella’s own offshoot food service brand, which started here, and is now stocked in Harris Farm and other independent grocers. While the olives, oils, meats and everything in between are excellent, cheese here is the drawcard. Paesenella’s main factory is just over in Marrickville, where they make all their own cow and buffalo milk cheese.
"Whatever they make at the factory in the morning, we get here in the afternoon," Dorothy says. Think still-warm ricotta, ultra creamy orbs of burrata and just-sweet mascarpone. If that's not a selling point, we're not sure what is.