As Balducci’s prepares to close — leaving behind many devoted customers, and other Westporters who think the store just randomly put laughably high prices on every item — it’s time to look back at its predecessor.
Balducci’s began as Hay Day. Westport’s first “gourmet grocery store” was located where the Maserati dealer is now.
The “country farm market” was stocked with fresh produce, baked goods, prepared food and the like. Paul Newman was a regular customer.
Longtime Westporters still have — and use — the very well-done “Hay Day Country Market Cookbook.”
(“250 recipes from the celebrated New England farm stand that helped bring authentic flavorful food back to America’s table,” the cover gushed.)
Hay Day expanded a couple of times, then moved to bigger digs in its present location a few hundred yards east. The site was occupied in the 1980s by Georgie Peorgie’s, Arnie Kaye’s ice cream parlor adjacent to his Arnie’s Place video game arcade.
Balducci’s — a small specialty chain, now owned by the much larger Albertson’s group — eventually bought Hay Day.
There is no word yet on a new tenant.
Let’s hope it’s an interesting one. A bank or nail salon would not do this place justice.
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(Photo/Matt Murray)
