*is nostalgic*
May. 12th, 2004 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eruthrosLook! Look! Cunha's County Store is reopening!
See, when we would drive down to SC, we'd usually drive down highway one. It's like this: taking highway 17 can be 30 minutes faster than highway one, or it can be an hour slower. Plus, the view from route one is gorgeous and you can picnic.
And we'd always stop in Half Moon Bay halfway there and pick up something at Cunha's County Store, which had the cheapest ataulfo mangoes ever seen. They were in a barrel by the door, and you had to dig through them carefully. Other fruit was still in cardboard boxes from local farmers. And Cunha's itself was this little, tiny, 70-year-old grocery store with aisles so narrow you couldn't pass other people. The floor was hardwood and creaked in places. The sign painted on the side of the store had been the same for fifty years. They had samples all over the place, making the aisles ever narrower, and they carried hand-made local jams and all that.
And yet they carried all of this fabulous, fabulous food! I mean, it's the first place mis padres and I tried Casa de Sanchez chips and salsa, the thick, crunchy kind of chip and a really good salsa. They were there for tasting. And they carried twenty-seven kinds of fancy chocolate bars. They had unsweetened iced tea, and imported fizzy lemonade, in addition to the sprite and all that. So wonderful food AND good atmosphere AND memories.
And then last year, at the end of May, just before I graduated, Cunha's burnt down to the ground. Completely wiped out the entire building.
And now, not even a year later, they're ready to open again, which is really a tribute to the importance of Cunha's to the community of Half Moon Bay. It's wonderful to think that they're really going to be open again, that you could pick up a picnic and go sit out on one of the beaches of route one, and that the neighbors will be chatting with the woman behind the counter, and that the fellow who works in the deli will give you advice on bread, and that you'll find someone putting up jams who will give you advice on preserves. The building won't be the same -- new floors don't creak, and disability laws mean that there needs to be an elevator and wider aisles now that it's not a historical building -- but how wonderful all the same.
See, when we would drive down to SC, we'd usually drive down highway one. It's like this: taking highway 17 can be 30 minutes faster than highway one, or it can be an hour slower. Plus, the view from route one is gorgeous and you can picnic.
And we'd always stop in Half Moon Bay halfway there and pick up something at Cunha's County Store, which had the cheapest ataulfo mangoes ever seen. They were in a barrel by the door, and you had to dig through them carefully. Other fruit was still in cardboard boxes from local farmers. And Cunha's itself was this little, tiny, 70-year-old grocery store with aisles so narrow you couldn't pass other people. The floor was hardwood and creaked in places. The sign painted on the side of the store had been the same for fifty years. They had samples all over the place, making the aisles ever narrower, and they carried hand-made local jams and all that.
And yet they carried all of this fabulous, fabulous food! I mean, it's the first place mis padres and I tried Casa de Sanchez chips and salsa, the thick, crunchy kind of chip and a really good salsa. They were there for tasting. And they carried twenty-seven kinds of fancy chocolate bars. They had unsweetened iced tea, and imported fizzy lemonade, in addition to the sprite and all that. So wonderful food AND good atmosphere AND memories.
And then last year, at the end of May, just before I graduated, Cunha's burnt down to the ground. Completely wiped out the entire building.
And now, not even a year later, they're ready to open again, which is really a tribute to the importance of Cunha's to the community of Half Moon Bay. It's wonderful to think that they're really going to be open again, that you could pick up a picnic and go sit out on one of the beaches of route one, and that the neighbors will be chatting with the woman behind the counter, and that the fellow who works in the deli will give you advice on bread, and that you'll find someone putting up jams who will give you advice on preserves. The building won't be the same -- new floors don't creak, and disability laws mean that there needs to be an elevator and wider aisles now that it's not a historical building -- but how wonderful all the same.
