In the corner of a pastry shop crammed into Boston’s North End, an older woman wearing a beat-up navy blue button-down and dirty blue jeans sits near the entrance and sips black coffee. As she shifts into the back of the shop on Cross Street, she walks by regular customers filing in past walls covered with photos ranging from personal family portraits to scenes of the Neapolitan countryside.
Everyone who ducks through the small entrance immediately walks over to her. No matter the age, she knows their names. It’s almost like a scene from “The Godfather.” But what the fictional, fatherly Don Corleone might have been for the Mafia of New York, Maria Merola, the owner of Maria’s Pastry Shop, is for the pastry world of Boston — Mike’s Pastry isn’t the only place in town. Owning her own family-operated bakery since 1982, it’s not just what Merola serves that keep the regulars and newcomers returning, but the unique style in which she does it.
A NEW BEGINNING
Merola, who said she comes from five generations of farming families, emigrated from Italy with her parents and three siblings to the United States in September 1968.
“I guess that is where I found my love for food and for produce,” Merola said. “We used to grow everything before the [European post-WWII] depression. From tomatoes, to wheat … everything we used to eat was fresh picked from our farm in Naples.”
“When the depression hit Europe, it was impossible for us to grow anything,” she continued. “We had to pack up our things, get on a boat and come to Boston.”
A new life in Boston meant a new beginning for Merola’s family. Soon she knew she needed to start working to help with financial woes.
One day, she came upon Modern Pastry, which at the time had two locations, one of which still sits on Hanover Street.
“I only had a sixth-grade education, and our family needed money,” she said. “I saw a sign in the front of a storefront looking for help, and so I took the job.”
Merola began her career by working at the cash register and cleaning up around the bakery. When she started working in 1973 at the age of 14, she said, she had no idea she would spend the next 35 years of her life at the same place.
“I always enjoyed working with food, but I really don’t like sweets,” she said. “I don’t eat them, and when I started working at the bakery, I didn’t imagine that I would be there forever, let alone own it.”
But that’s just what she did. When the owner of Modern Pastry decided to give up his second storefront in 1982, Merola scooped it up.
“[My family was] looking for an investment at the time,” she said. “By that point I was very familiar with the way the kitchen was run, so we purchased the store and decided to make it a family business.”
BLIND TASTING
As Merola absentmindedly stirs the swirling coffee in her cup, there’s a noticeable absence of cream and sugar.
“I hate sweets,” she said. “I always drink my coffee black, and for those who don’t, we still have milk in the refrigerator.”
While both Maria’s mother and sister Enza Merola work in the store, Merola is the only person on the seven-member staff who works directly with the ingredients in the kitchen. Quite the paradox when she doesn’t even eat sweets.
While there are many pastry shops in the North End, Merola’s style may make her establishment a bit more unique; although she makes many traditional dishes, she uses absolutely no recipes to create her treats and does she taste her finished product.
At most restaurants and bakeries, employees learn the signature way of making items such as “Mike’s Famous Cannoli.” It isn’t same for Merola. Each day when she cooks and bakes, she makes the same dishes without precise recipes or directions.
“I’ve been in this place long enough to know what looks good,” she said. “Recipes aren’t important. It is how you feel when you are making it.”
When she enters the store at 8 a.m., Merola decides what she is going to make for the day, and prints a menu according to what she wants to make. She takes out the ingredients for her pastries and just begins to feel her way through each dish.
While she knows the ingredients that go into each sweet, she never measures, and she said she always experiments with quantities and variations of a particular ingredient.
Merola said some days she feels like switching ingredients, and may use confectioners’ sugar in exchange for granulated. She said she always finds it interesting to see how the traditional dishes will come out each day.
“Days when I really hit the target are days I appreciate,” she said. “No matter what business you are in, there is no such thing as always having perfect days.”
“When I create something really great one day, I appreciate it for what it is,” she continued, “and hope I can do the same the next day.”
With this personal approach to her craft, patrons seem loyal to the creativity, despite the changes that might occur daily with their family favorites.
“You never eat the same Cannoli twice here, which is why people like myself come back,” said Nicola Alfonso of Arlington, who has been a customer of Maria’s Pastry Shop for the past 20 years. “[The food] is always a surprise. It reminds me of those times at home, when [my siblings and I] used to cook the traditional Italian deserts with my parents.”
Merola’s sister Enza Merola, who manages the front of the store as well as their personal delivery service, said she is always shocked at what her sister is able to create without the aid of a recipe or high-end kitchen.
“We have two small mixers in the back and the oven,” Enza Merola said. “Everything is done by hand, and she is the only one that does it,” she said. “[The family is] amazed that she is able to keep her work consistently familiar. Even though the flavors might change from day to day, you can always tell when it is ‘Maria’s’ food.”
SCRAPS AND HARD TIMES
Though it’s been open since 1982, the bakery went through a rough financial patch when the Big Dig construction began to tear apart the sidewalk directly in front of the bakery in the late 1990s.
“When they began to build all the tunnels, they barricaded the street, giving us only two feet of sidewalk,” Enza said. “They put up wires and barricades. When we looked outside, it looked [like a] prison.”
While Modern and Mike’s Pastry were less affected by the construction, Merola used the circumstances as an opportunity to reorganize her business.
“We had never planned to ship or deliver,” she said. “Even though our client base was staying the same, we weren’t growing. We decided then to start delivering.”
“Back when these used to be in better shape” she said, standing up and pointing to her legs, “I was a good walker and would carry around bags full of Amaretti [Italian Macaroons] and Cannoli downtown. I was the car and the delivery boy, all in one package.”
The delivery service, which has since become a custom shipping service, is still done the old fashioned way. Enza, who runs that end of the business, doesn’t use shipping forms or FedEx code numbers.
“I write everything down on a pad of paper, wrap the boxes myself and bring them to the post office to go off,” she said.
HER PET PASTRY
Merola tells of another family tradition that sets her treats apart — recycling, and she’s not talking about the paper Enza writes deliveries on.
“We almost never throw anything away,” she said.
Any leftover pastry is recycled and used to make Totos. Named after Merola’s favorite Italian actor Antonio De Curtis, Totos are a combination of scraps of discarded pastries that Merola turns into a cookie and covers with chocolate.
“We sell these things like hotcakes,” she said. “When people come in and ask for something special, we bring them a plate of Totos.”
Merola explained that while these are not traditionally Italian, they are traditionally “Merola.”
“We are an Italian bakery, but we are a family bakery first and foremost,” she said.
Besides specialty dishes, Merola said she wants to create an atmosphere unlike anywhere else in the North End.
“I want people to feel like they are family and that when they come inside they feel like they are in Italy,” she said.
Merola said she also wants to give her customers an experience alongside their food. She wants to be remembered as someone who brought family and tradition into her workplace.
“In Italy, no matter who you are, everyone will treat you like family,” she said. “I hope people will find the same thing here.”