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The first of the Pusateri's Food Halls at Saks Fifth Avenue has opened at the US luxury department store's Sherway Gardens location in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. Sharing the lower level with the Saks Menswear department, the food hall at Saks' second recently opened Toronto store has debuted in advance of the food hall at the Saks Eaton Centre location.
At 10 AM this morning, the press was led through the store by Pusateri's General Manager John Mastroianni and President Frank Luchetta. Several Luchetta and Pusateri family members were on hand, including Frank's mother Dina Luchetta, several of whose recipes are featured as prepared meal items available from the upscale store.
Mastroianni stressed in section after section that the food on sale at Pusateri's is always best-in-class, and as often as possible from independent, hands-on organic and natural-method producers, tending towards family-owned companies and away from conglomerates.
Saks features a wide centre aisle with island displays for prepared foods from around the world, while side aisles feature groceries, specialty counters, and places to enjoy a meal. The set-up is inspired by the famous Harrod's Food Hall in London England, and in place of ornate decoration, features bolder more modern design that mixes earth tones and textures with bright counter surfaces.
While Pusateri's aims to make food shopping an event, hoping to attract shoppers who are looking for special, hard-to-find items, more standard grocery items can also be found at the store, stocked with a wide enough range of items so that shoppers will be tempted by the convenience of doing all of their grocery shopping at the admittedly more expensive store.
Other opening day festivities sampling included specially made sandwiches. The festivities are set to go on for a full week.
Pusateri's prosciutto, and other port cured pork products, are supplied by renowned Niagara Food Specialties, also known as Pingue Prosciutto. Mario Pingue was on hand to debut the store and explain his family's dedication to crafting products in the Italian tradition, creating better-tasting salumi from humanely treated and naturally-raised animals.
One of the options for a meal at Pusateri's is at its sushi counter.
A champagne bar is also on hand, ready for any harried shoppers to sit down for a moment and relax.
…or for anyone looking to add more temporary colour, Pusateri's has that covered too.
The Sherway location—about 25,000 square feet in size—gives a strong indication of what shoppers at the Saks Fifth Avenue Eaton Centre location can expect when that similarly-sized space opens on the concourse level of that store in the coming weeks. Want to know more about Sherway Gardens' ongoing expansion? You can visit our dataBase file for the mall, linked below, for more information and renderings, or choose the associated Forum thread link for more photos and discussion of the mall. Of course, you can always leave a comment in the space provided below.
| Related Companies: | Isotherm Engineering Ltd., PCL Construction, Trillium Architectural Products |
