The food-focused household of editors Jack Bishop and Lauren Chattman, who live just down the street from Cavaniola’s Gourmet in Sag Harbor, speaks of life before- and after-Cavaniola’s. Indeed, When Michael and Tracey Cavaniola opened their cheeseshop on Division Street, they filled a certain kind of gap in the town.
There was their extensive, curated selection of hand-picked cheeses, including early offerings from Mecox Bay dairy and Catapano goat farm. The store had excellent chocolate and olive oil and pasta and other to-go-with-cheese essentials. The store evolved and grew and today, neighbors can pop in in the morning for a croissant and coffee, and in the afternoon for cheese and wine. Now, this corner of town has become a veritable one-stop-shopping opportunity. (Sag Harbor Beverage next door has been getting in all sorts of craft beer, if you haven’t noticed.)
And, with the beautiful shop’s latest addition of eye candy–a fire-engine red Berkel manual crank meat slicer featured in the video tour above–Cavaniola’s adds yet another offering to their menu: Machine-sliced cured meat that tastes like it were cut by hand. “Four out of 10 cheese shop customers get prosciutto now,” says Michael as he demos his superior slicing, shows us what they’re dishing–from smoked bluefish spread to potato chips to salad in a jar–at Cavaniola’s Kitchen next door, and takes us through the subterranean Umbrella Building, one of Sag Harbor’s oldest structures, that has become Cavaniola Cellars. See all three of this shops above, and be sure to visit him in person at 89 Division Street if you’re out in Sag Harbor.
