I usually seek Dear Heart out early in the mornings.
It is quiet then, the cheese counter empty. I get her all to myself: her expertise, her undivided attention, her sweet endearments.
“What can I get you, Dear Heart,” she’ll ask and then when I explain what I want to do with the cheese, whether a grated combination for pasta or feta for my salad, she’ll guide me.
Her name is Carol Pascuzzi but to Pittsburghers she is Dear Heart, because for the last two decades that is how she has addressed every single customer.
“Thank you, Dear Heart.”
“Will it be the Drunken Goat today, Dear Heart?”
The endearment started with her grandmother, who called it to her mother, who still calls it to her daughter who has worked the cheese counter at
Pennsylvania Macaroni Company in the Strip District off and mostly on for the last 20 years.
The tradition will likely endure only through Dear Heart’s reign at the Penn Mac cheese counter.
“It’s kind of girly,” she says, cleaning out the cheese case early one weekday morning, explaining that her three sons do not use the endearment on others. It is a shame, she muses, because it is a really good way to start the day.
“Everyone should call everyone ‘Dear Heart’ and we wouldn’t have as many problems,” Dear Heart says. “I think whatever you put out there comes back ten-fold.”
Dear Heart is not only exceptionally kind; she knows her cow, goat and sheep milk varietals. She wants to be able to recommend the best cheese for a given meal because to Dear Heart, people chart their history and their lives by meals that they’ve had.
“All cheeses, even American artisanals, are getting better,” she explains. She studies books but learns daily from her customers and chefs who visit and the cheeses they recommend or request. If she can, she’ll add it the order list.
Her favorite cheeses, she says, vary with her mood. Right now, she’s quite taken with a Buche du Poitou goat’s milk and the Beemster XO cow’s milk from Holland.
As she talks and cleans, her husband, Nick, who also works at Penn Mac, checks the stock behind the cheese and meat deli counter which spans one wall of the store.
When she started working at the strip, she wanted to be personable but couldn’t remember everyone’s name. So, every customer became a “Dear Heart.” Thus a legend was born. And it didn’t stop there. Sidle further down to the deli counter and get a taste of the guys. also legendary in these parts, who like to joke around with customers. "Is there a film crew outside today? Because you look like a movie star!"
More than its barrels of olives, its cheeses and its breads, the Strip District is defined by its personalities who dish out those delicacies.
Take the crew that gathers every morning just up the street from Penn Mac at Sunseri Sunrise Bakery in the Strip. One recent morning, by 7 a.m., the only two left at the table are Barbara Verderber and Joseph Hermanowski.
Every morning over bagels and coffee, they talk, read the paper, and debate, then they go to work – Joseph Hermanowski to run his corner store two doors down and Barbara Verderber to run the deli counter across the street at Sunseri’s run by brothers Jimmy and Nino.
You Won't Get This at Wal-MartThe best part of the Strip, for Verderber, is the people. “All my people. I love my customers.” During the lunch crush, she makes sandwiches and gets one last chance to debate with Hermanowski when he comes in for one.
The favored sandwich among customers – the hot sausage with eggplant, peppers and cheese – is not necessarily her own. “I like eggplant with peppers and onions, sauce and cheese,” Verderber says, adding that while all the sandwich ingredients are made fresh daily, she believes it is the fresh-baked baguettes that really make the sandwich.
Not to Mention the Customers
Every morning Bill Runco leaves his Point Breeze home to drive to the Strip District. His first stop: Primanti Bros. Restaurant. He does not go there to eat the French-fry sandwiches. He goes to see if he can fetch the employees anything – whether it’s cigarettes, coffee or breakfast.
“I’m there every morning at 5:15 a.m. You can set your clock by me,” Runco says, after purchasing three packs of cigarettes from Hermanowski for the Primanti’s crew. This trip, he explains, is for the night crew which is just finishing up. He’ll make another swing through when the shift changes at 7:30 a.m. “I buy them for the people that work there because they can’t leave the store,” Runco explains.
“Then he sits around and bull craps,” jokes Hermanowski. “He is their mascot.”
Runco leaves and a short time later, a young woman comes in and spends several minutes chatting with Hermanowski and his 12-year-old grandson, Austin, who is working at the store this summer. After she leaves, Hermanowski explains that she had just finished an all-night shift at one of the produce houses a few blocks away.
“A lot of people work at produce, they work all night packing,” he says. “I ask a lot of people why they’re shopping here because I don’t have a lot of the stuff that Wal-Mart and Giant Eagle has and they say it’s because of the personalities.”
“If the government would just realize that they have assets in small business,” Hermanowski says. Small business runs in the Hermanowski bloodline.
For many years, Anthony Hermanowski ran a wholesale grocery business in Lawrenceville. Almost four decades ago, his son, Joseph Hermanowski bought a bankrupt business a few blocks down on Penn Avenue, just to clear it out, temporarily. He has been working a Penn Avenue storefront ever since.
In that span, Hermanowski has seen Pittsburghers leave town and then move back to the ‘burgh decades later.
“I have traveled around to different parts of the country and it is so expensive to live in other places. Like my daughter, Aleita, who just moved back from San Francisco. You have to have three jobs just to eat,” Hermanowski says. “Pittsburgh is a large city but it has a small-town atmosphere. People say it’s just much friendlier here.”
Perhaps nowhere more so than in the Strip.
Heidi Price last wrote about vintage clothing stores for Pop City. To read it, click
here.
Captions:Carol Pascuzzi at the cheese counter at Penn MacMonte Veronese Valpolicella cheeseCarol Pascuzzi preparing cheese roundWelcome to the Strip muralJoseph Hermanowski, Rocco Carrier and Barbara Verderber at the Sunrise BakeryJoseph Hermanoski in his storePhotographs copyright Brian Cohen