Raleigh's macho Italian grocer: Ciao

The best way to say goodbye to Conti's Italian Market is to stick your head in the door and take a last whiff. Rosemary. Garlic. Olive oil. Gorgonzola.

It's the only place on North Person Street -- not to mention five or six blocks of Oakwood -- that doesn't smell like Krispy Kreme doughnuts.

But now Rick Conti, 49, has mostly shuttered his grocery to focus on catering. You'll find him baking ziti for polite business luncheons, wondering out loud how long he'll last.

"I hate to cook," he grouses. "That's why I became a grocer."

Eight years ago, Rick Conti landed on North Person Street like a man from outer space.

He was loud. He had an accent. He wore a gray ponytail, waved his arms and spoke in sentences that deployed dirty words as nouns and verbs.

Culture clashes were inevitable in this section of Raleigh, which can be a bit genteel -- or at least old-fashioned.

Suddenly, here was a guy from Niagara Falls selling Coluccio olive oil and Moretti beer next to the Person Street Pharmacy, which dates to the time of nickelodeons and raspberry phosphates and still serves milkshakes at a soda fountain.

Conti rants about certain neighbors and their views on "Eye-talians," and the magazine subscriptions that keep arriving there addressed to Vito Corleone.

But mostly, he says, he's tired.

For years, he complains, nobody cared about vagrants walking past his window or bothered to pull weeds out of nearby sidewalk cracks.

Well-traveled patrons

The building next door has a sheet of plywood hammered over the front, warped by sun and rain.

In his early days on Person Street, Conti hollered about shoddy conditions at the now-closed G&B Auto Repair down the street, telling a News & Observer reporter in 2001: "It's a junkyard. If you don't complain about your neighbor having a garbage dump, that garbage dump can exist and flourish."

Conti lobbied constantly for more parking spaces. Only a quarter of his patrons came from nearby Oakwood and Mordecai streets, and the rest drove from as far away as Tennessee. But with cars parked outside Conti's for upwards of four hours, he says, stopping for fancy olive oil could be too much of a hassle.

Conti concedes he could be a bit of a jerk. His argument boils down to "Move the @#$@ cars so people can $@#$ park!" and he shouts it to all who will listen.

"I'm really tired and cranky and irritable," he says over a cup of coffee at his store.

Hey, he got it done

Foodies can debate how authentic Conti's was. Reviews online are full of smug comments about his not selling real ciabatta or about how he'd get run out of Brooklyn, or Philly, or even Greensboro.

But he ran a one-man show just north of downtown Raleigh, and he stuck it out for almost a decade in a strip that has struggled to keep breathing.

For all the smart-growth talk about neighborhood groceries and walkable communities, Conti made it happen.

In a lot of years, he managed to fill his little store with loyal shoppers. He closed for a few months and navigated some rough spots.

Even with his doors closed last Friday and a catering menu plastered on the front window, neighbors still poked their heads inside, looking for Italian sausage.

Person Street might thrive someday without him. Businesses such as Marsh Woodwinds and Rosie's Plate, which sells food "completely gluten, shellfish and peanut-free," have opened there.

But the strip will be quieter with Conti confined to a kitchen, and it won't smell as seductive.