The owner of Maria’s Pastry Shop in the North End wanted to lock her doors for good last week.
But devoted customers of the beloved business may be lucky enough to get a last cannoli, because 66-year-old Maria Merola hasn’t been able to turn away those who come to pay their last respects.
“What am I going to do? They don't want to stop ordering stuff from me,” Merola said on Saturday, gesturing toward the phone that hangs in her kitchen. “You don’t want to say no. I am a sucker for that.”
Merola stopped taking orders but will continue to dish out pastries through Friday. If enough stock remains, the doors will remain open through Saturday.
After decades of pre-dawn wake-up calls and seven-day weeks, Merola will hand in the key to her landlord by Sept. 30 and enter a long-awaited retirement. It’s not the work she’ll miss, she said, but the people. She talked while piping dozens of cookies onto trays and eyeing the quickly browning batches rotating in the oven.
“When I started working here, what I liked, and what I still do like, is talk,” she said. “That's what does it, the customers.”
Merola emigrated from Italy in 1968. By 1970, she was training as an assistant at Modern Pastry, which owned 46 Cross Street — where Merola's bakery now stands — at the time. She took over the shop from Modern in 1982 and renamed it after herself. The place has remained mostly unchanged since then, earning the status of the only business to remain open on her block during Boston’s 15-year massive Central Artery project, the Big Dig, record snow falls, and a gentrifying neighborhood.
Merola said she considered passing the business on to new owners, but she didn’t want to deal with the logistics because she rents the locale.
She earned her acclaim for focusing on ingredients and techniques rooted in the Italian tradition, rather than what she considers an over-sweetened, Americanized style of baking.
Customers seeking her famed cannoli won’t find mint-chip or Oreo varieties here — just shells, plain and chocolate-dipped, filled to order with ricotta cheese. The shelves are stocked with flaky pastries and assortments of colorful cookies; signs are posted throughout the store warning “No Self Service” to heed those tempted by the sights and smells of sweets.
When news broke of Merola’s retirement in late August, some began stockpiling her celebrated confections. One New York-based customer ordered 10 pounds of marzipan to continue her longstanding tradition of Maria’s at Christmastime, Merola said.
Among those arriving at the bakery last weekend were Andrea Walker and Joan Santacrose, who drove from the South Shore to purchase a foot-high stack of pies and several bags of cookies for their last-ever Maria’s haul. Walker said she was making the effort to honor her mother, who died about 10 years ago.
“It’s the closest to my mother’s cooking,” she said. “We’re going to miss it here.”
At a nearby table, Pat Volonino reminisced with a few fellow regulars. The group has convened every weekend at Maria’s for years, celebrating retirements, birthdays, and anniversaries.
Volonino said she moved to the North End 30 years ago and has been coming to Maria’s for almost as long.
“There were nights when I'd be coming down Cambridge Street, and everything seemed dark and mean. Everything seemed so cold. I felt so all alone,” Volonino said. “I saw the lights on, I felt that sense of belonging. And it felt so good.”
For many like Volonino, the closure won’t just be a loss of cannoli but of community and family, too.
“Once we came here, we never left,” Volonino said. “When she closes, we’re going to get in between the door so it doesn’t shut.”
Kaya Williams is a journalism student at Boston University.
