Saying Goodbye to Sue’s

What can I say? I am really tired of saying goodbye to businesses in the neighborhood and here we have it—another of my favorite stores, probably the one that I frequent the most, on an almost daily basis, is soon closing down. Sadly, Sue’s (aka Santo's Natural and Organic), owned for the past 23 years by the wonderful Joe and Sue, will be going out of business by the end of the month. It joins a long list of stores that I miss, including College Bakery, Good Food, Classic Impressions, Try Rae’s First, and Latticini Barese. When I moved to this part of the neighborhood almost 16 years ago, it was about the time of the passing of Frances of Frances’ Fruit and Vegetable Store on Court, between First and Second Places. Frances was a distant cousin of my mom’s and we shopped there regularly.

Luckily, there was another fruit and vegetable store just a couple of blocks down, right around the corner from our new house and that’s when I found Sue’s. What I discovered about Sue’s was that it wasn’t just a fruit and vegetable store. Indeed, this little shop was one of the neighborhood’s hidden gems. Almost every time I went in there, I noticed another surprising thing that they carried. I began just buying organic milk, eggs and yogurt at the best prices in the whole area in addition to great seasonal produce like white peaches, clementines, black plums and on-the-vine tomatoes. Then I found that the shelves of this little shop were chock-full of a great variety of fine international foods. If I was making Mexican food, Sue’s had an assortment of salsa and blue corn tortillas. If it was Indian night (yes, an Italian-American girl with a Chinese-American husband sometimes cooks Indian food), they were the only place I could find naan and the most delicious frozen samosas . (Yes, I know that’s not really cooking.) If the vegetarians in my family were coming over to eat, Sue’s had a wide selection of vegetarian options. They also had kimchi and those imported sesame pretzels from Israel that I cannot stop eating. And if it turned out that more people than expected were coming for dinner and I only had one or two pounds of a certain pasta, I could always buy an extra pound of De Cecco’s at Sue’s. I bought organic lentils, lots of nuts and that delicious, imported, high calorie French brioche there. And while I was never a fan of oatmeal, I surprisingly took a liking to it in the last couple of years, and don’t you know that Sue’s carries the best loose organic oatmeal I’ve ever had. An added plus was that no matter what I bought, I could always count on Sue to give me her honest review of a product.

Sue’s also had some of the best cut flowers around. Not so much those big oversized bouquets but pretty delicate stems like tulips I bought to lift me out of the winter doldrums, daffodils to herald spring, the hyacinths at Easter, my very favorite freesia to put in my St. Anthony vase on his feast day in June, and autumn colored chrysanthemums to decorate my house each Thanksgiving.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, I remember the big wooden crate of perfect white button mushrooms I bought one year. Those were a lot of mushrooms to cook but buying the whole crate reminded me of shopping for vegetables with my mom when I was a kid.

I also remember when I told Joe that I was going to try pickling some eggplant, something I had never done before. He went into the back of the store and brought out some overripe eggplant which he gave me free of charge. They came out really good, if I don’t say so myself, so I shared a jar with Joe.

The very best thing about shopping at Sue’s, however, was getting to have a little visit with Sue, Joe and their family. Although they worked hard, putting in long hours, they were always kind, always pleasant, and always made my day a little brighter. I could never tire of hearing Joe’s easy laugh or talking to Sue about what I was cooking that night, the latest diet, or our everyday topic, the weather. We also talked about our kids; Sue and Joe have great kids and in the last year or so, I grew accustomed to talking to young Raymond about the weather, too. Sue recently shared with me the news that their daughter is expecting a baby and I was so happy for her that I thought I was going to tear up.

The closing of Sue’s is not only going to lessen my convenience of having a great little shop around the corner, it’s also going to make my daily shopping experience duller and less personable. The neighborhood is not just losing a store, it’s losing a bit of its charm, the very thing that makes Carroll Gardens a neighborhood. I have no high expectations that whatever new business takes their place will be selling anything that I really need; the neighborhood that used to have butchers, produce stores, and bakeries around every corner is now flush with nail salons, banks and realtors. There are nice people working in those businesses but they are not places that facilitate putting dinner on the table.

I know I’m not alone in wishing Sue, Joe, their kids, and Cheetah the cat all the very best and sunny new chapters in their lives. I hope they know how sad we are to say goodbye and how much we will miss their friendly faces. Talking about the weather just won’t ever be the same.

Postscript: Wednesday, October 30th will probably be Sue and Joe's last day in the store, if you want to stop by to say goodbye. Today, I bought out their stock of sesame pretzels, six bags worth!