A rarity in the world of rare foods
SACRAMENTO — Darrell Corti looks as orderly as his grocery store.
Between neat aisles of pastel pastas, imported sauces and specialty items made for Corti Bros., Corti can usually be spotted in his daily uniform: a collared shirt, tie and royal blue grocer’s smock. Here, time seems to stand still.
Corti’s father, Frank, and uncle, Gino, opened Corti Bros. in 1947. It began as an Italian grocery store but eventually under Corti’s direction grew into a destination for rare products from around the world. Over the years, the shop has evolved with the times, and in the process it has delineated the modern role of the grocery store.
“The world is now even bigger than it was 50 years ago when I started in this business, and now with all of the modern communications, there’s a lot of knowledge around,” he says. “However, having all this knowledge around doesn’t necessarily mean that there are better products. Our job as grocers is to be selective.”
And for Corti, the responsibility of curating means globe-trotting. He doesn’t travel as much as he used to — he’s 74, and airports don’t exactly appeal — but he doesn’t stay still, either. Just last month, he flew to Hawaii for a sake festival. This fall, he’ll go to Japan and China to taste tea.
Today, Corti Bros. carries Japanese whiskeys, Ukrainian wine, Scandinavian lefse, Greek baklava and the best selection of Sacramento beer in town. At checkout, the usual row of mass-produced candy and gum is ditched in favor of artisan and imported chocolate.
The deli sandwiches — all less than $8 — are local favorites (the Corti Special, thick with salami, pastrami, ham, mortadella and cheese, weighs in at 1½ pounds and costs $5.29). The house-made ravioli, which Corti says is the oldest continually made food product in Sacramento, has been made with the same recipe since the 1940s, and the store’s ravioli machine dates back to the ’60s.
That’s why Corti Bros. became one of the most important food hubs in the country in the ’60s and ’70s. Chez Panisse’s Alice Waters, former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl and former Berkeley restaurateur Narsai David made regular treks there.
“Darrell is the most knowledgeable food and wine person I’ve never met,” says David, now the food and wine editor at KCBS. “I don’t know if there’s any market as all-encompassing as his.”
In short: Corti is a legend. When California’s food movement was just taking off, he was influencing palates by introducing the state to truffles and balsamic vinegar.
But Corti doesn’t seek the spotlight. He doesn’t talk about how Italy named him a the equivalent of knighthood, for his promotion of Italian goods. He shrugs off the accolades.
“Most of it’s hubbub,” he says.
Ask Corti about his role in the food world, and he’ll merely state that he’s a grocer. In his view, he’s a filter for the people, and that suits him just fine.
“It’s work,” he says. “I always travel with the idea that we haven’t found everything in the world. We need to find more things. Interesting things.”
Yet he downplays these adventures, just as he downplays much of his past. He admits the truffle business took off after he first brought them to Corti Bros. in 1969, but doesn’t care to elaborate on why it mattered.
“Truffles are another fungus,” he says. “There’s nothing special about truffles.”
He backs up that iconoclastic thought with his knowledge, encyclopedic in its detail. Whether it’s truffles’ forgotten history as “potatoes of the poor” or the origin of local wine grapes, Corti doesn’t shy away from unpopular — but always informed — opinions.
He’s a man of dichotomies. He has a reputation in some circles as a curmudgeon, probably because he doesn’t care what people think of him. But his friends, like David, attest to Corti’s warmth.
Right now, he’s thinking about the future of his market. He is renegotiating the store’s lease, which is up in 2019. He is the only remaining person in his family with the Corti name, but several of his employees are practically family, sticking around for more than 30 years. Corti Bros. will live on, in some form.
“In 2019, I will be 77,” Corti says. “My father died at the age of 85. My uncle died at 84. There’s no reason why I couldn’t live longer. On the other hand, everything stops sometime.”
Until then, he will continue to work in the store from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. seven days a week, returning home only to eat, sleep and play with his pet dove, Paloma, who roams free in his kitchen. Corti has no plans to retire. “What would I do? I’d be bored.”