Atticus Opens New Market In East Rock

Seven floors, four ceilings, two storefronts, and 15 months of renovations later, the longtime downtown cafe and bookstore Atticus has opened up a second shop in East Rock.

The new Atticus outpost opened its glass doors to the public for the first time on Monday.

Hungry shoppers walked in and out of the 771 Orange St. space for the first time since the former neighborhood Italian grocery store Romeo and Cesare’s shuttered in December 2019.

Atticus Cafe and Bookstore CEO Charlie Negaro, Jr. said that the family-owned business, which has been on Chapel Street for 45 years and which also runs the Chabaso Bakery on James Street, has been looking to expand its local operations for about a decade.

“We see this concept as a place to pay living wages to our staff, bring local food businesses to fruition, and help turn New Haven into a city that is less transient,” he said about the new Orange Street spot.

With those goals in mind, the Orange Street location will be focused primarily on food — on the sandwiches, salads, pastries, and bread that Atticus customers know so well; on fresh produce and perishables; and on new food products emerging from homegrown entrepreneurs.

That push to make, sell, and promote the food-work of locals — known as The CT Food Launchpad—is kicking off with partnerships with Sanctuary Kitchen and Huneebee Project.

Negaro said the Orange Street store’s shelves now boast the former’s za’atar rolls and keyk kadoo (squash cakes) and the latter’s salted honey tarts, in addition to everything from Cato Corner Farm cheese to Inka Crops plantain chips to arugula and artichokes and poblano peppers to, of course, loaves of Atticus’s country sourdough bread.

Negaro also said construction crews spent quite a bit of time peeling back fixtures and additions that Romeo and Cesare’s had installed in order to reach the high-ceilinged, open floor-plan space of the new Atticus market. That meant taking away four layers of ceiling and seven layers of floor as well as two storefronts, he said.

“We needed some more shelves,” Atticus and Chabaso Communications Director Reed Immer (pictured) said when asked why the businesses wanted to expand from its longtime downtown shop into a second location in East Rock.

The ample floor and shelf space at the gut-renovated Orange Street market provides much more opportunity than the current Chapel Street spot to make available fresh, prepared, and packaged food alike.

He said Atticus also plans on hosting events on the brick patio in front of the space’s Orange Street entrance — which itself shows a facade newly revealed after the peeling away of Romeo and Cesare’s former awnings. Those events will likely be some kind of mini- or pop-up market showcasing the wares of one of the CT Food Launchpad’s local food entrepreneurs.

“We wanted to created a place where people have such a great experience” that they want to stay in New Haven, Negaro said.

Negaro and Atticus operational manager Brandi Hawkins said that the new store will be open seven days a week, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and has just under 20 employees to start.

Retired pediatrician Robert Windom (pictured) sat at one of the new wooden picnic benches outside of the Atticus market, enjoying a cappuccino in the sun as he read Walter Isaacson’s The Code Breaker. He said he knew the neighborhood well after living at Whitney Avenue near St. Thomas’s Day School for a number of years.

Now he lives downtown, just a few blocks away from the original Atticus on Chapel Street. He said walking an extra few blocks up to East Rock to check out the new location was well worth the trip.

“I think it’s great, easy to get to,” he said. Then he put on his sunglasses, took a sip from his cappuccino, and returned to his book, as customers walking up and down Orange Street popped in to the new shop to see what the newly opened market had to offer.