Bayou St. John Lost One Corner Grocery and Gained Three Counters That Stay Out of Each Other's Way

Two long-running family businesses on Bayou St. John have recently retired. In 2025 on Esplanade Avenue, the third-generation owners of Terranova Supermarket closed the grocery that had been on that oak-lined block since 1925. At the triangular corner of Moss Street and Hagan Avenue, the family behind R&S Auto Service, where people brought their cars for many years, also retired and closed their garage.

Both buildings sell food again. One grocery became three counters within walking distance of the bayou: a butcher, a deli, and a farm stop with a butcher of its own. They don't all do the same job. Since this summer they've been dividing the work, and one division is in writing as a neighborly deal over who gets to make the muffuletta.

The Muffuletta Rule on Esplanade

The fourth generation, Anthony and Jennifer Terranova, didn't let the business end. They split the old grocery and kept the butcher shop for themselves as Terranova's Meats at 3308 Esplanade Ave., which opened on August 26, 2025. The family renovated the rest of the building and listed it for commercial lease.

Cecile and Barre Tanguis live a few blocks away, and they saw the sign. Their company runs the local Poke Loa brand and a food hall in Miami. NOLA.com reported that they wanted the space to complement the cluster of restaurants and businesses already nearby instead of competing with them. They opened Dué Market at 3306 Esplanade Ave. this summer. The name is Italian for "two," as in a second chapter for the building, and it's also the name of the family's pug.

Dué sells Italian sandwiches, gelato, sno-balls and coffee. It doesn't sell a muffuletta. That's by agreement with the Terranova family. The muffuletta at Terranova's goes back to around 2002, when Benjamin Terranova's father, Anthony Terranova Sr., worked out his own version with a precise slice of meats and his preferred ratio of olive salad to bread. For years the grocery made a small batch only on Saturdays, and it usually sold out early.

The deal has worked for both sides. In a follow-up from NOLA.com's Ian McNulty, the attention around Dué brought a new wave of customers who found both shops at once. The owners regularly send people next door for the other's specialty. The vintage Coca-Cola "Terranova's Supermarket" sign is still over Dué's door, which explains some of the confusion. With the extra traffic, the Terranovas now make muffulettas most days, sometimes every day, though McNulty notes that nothing is guaranteed at a small family shop.

Dué may also start making Italian sausage red gravy sandwiches with Terranova's links, which would turn the shared wall into a supply line.

What Each Counter Covers

The old grocery handled meat, staples, sandwiches and a Saturday muffuletta under one roof. Here's how that work is split today, using the hours each business has listed:

Dué's deli is run by Dylan Brumfield, most recently of Mid-City Pizza, and Chrissy Hardy manages the shop. The Italian hero gets a spicy edge from capicola on a Dong Phuong pistolette. The Italian beef is balsamic-braised and pressed on pan de cristal. The old grocery's broad windows were covered for years. They're open again, with butcher-block counters and a few café tables outside.

The Garage Where the Bayou Meets the Greenway

The second retirement became something no corner store on this bayou has been before. Caroline Rogers and Mike Bertel bought the R&S property after the family closed the garage and opened Farmer's Butcher & Farmstop in mid-June 2026. It sits on the triangular plot where Bayou St. John meets the Lafitte Greenway. From outside it still looks like a garage. The glass roll-up doors now look out on cars, cyclists and walkers crossing at the bayou and the Greenway.

A farm stop runs on consignment. As NOLA.com described it, producers set their own prices, deliver about a week of inventory at a time, and keep 70% of sales. The store keeps 30% and handles sales and marketing. The couple also raise Wagyu beef and heritage pork at their own Three Fires Farm in Poplarville, Mississippi, about an hour from the city. Bertel's family runs Toulouse Street Millworks nearby.

The butcher counter is run by Leighann Smith, who once ran the butcher program at Cochon Butcher and later co-owned Piece of Meat around the corner on Bienville Street. Piece of Meat closed in 2023. In a Gambit interview, Smith said the green onion and hot sausages were the early best sellers. The hot sausage uses pepper mash from Once Around the Kitchen, and the boudin is made with water buffalo from Bayou Sarah Farms in St. Francisville. She also debones whole chickens, leaving only the drumstick, and stuffs them with boudin. Anything sold uncooked comes with a recipe card.

Up on Esplanade, a handshake keeps the two shops from overlapping, and down at Moss and Hagan the schedule does the same job. The Crescent City Farmers Market sets up a few steps away every Thursday from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. Bertel sees that as a way for farmers to combine deliveries and for shoppers to make one bigger run, and he expects the two to work together more.

There's more planned for the lot. When it opened, Farmer's said its house plants would grow into a garden center from Tiny Nest Botanicals. It also planned an Airstream coffee bar called Shiny Thing, pouring beans from Mammoth Coffee Co.

A Week Across Three Counters

Because the three shops split the work, the day of the week decides which one you can use:

1. Sunday and Monday. Terranova's Meats is closed. Farmer's is open, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sunday and 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Monday, and Dué is open all day. Smith works the Farmer's butcher block every day except these two, so plan any custom meat order for later in the week.
2. Tuesday through Friday. All three counters are open, and Terranova's keeps its longest hours, until 6 p.m.
3. Thursday afternoon. The Crescent City Farmers Market and Farmer's are steps apart from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m., which is the only time farm stands and the farm stop operate side by side.
4. Saturday. This was always the muffuletta day. Terranova's closes at 3 p.m., and the sandwich used to sell out well before that.
5. After dinner, any night. Dué stays open until 9 p.m., and the Tanguis family designed it partly as a place for coffee and dessert after a meal nearby.

Thanksgiving Already Has a Preorder

The first holiday test of this setup is coming. Farmer's website has a banner up announcing that Thanksgiving preorders are open, with orders taken through its online ordering page. Terranova's has spent a century on the kind of meat that ends up on holiday tables: stuffed chickens, stuffed pork chops, house-made sausage and hogshead cheese. At Farmer's the stuffed chicken is filled with buffalo boudin. Both butchers stuffing birds a short walk apart is about as close as the two counters come to overlapping.

Before then comes Halloween. The Faubourg St. John Neighborhood Association lists Bounty on the Bayou for Saturday, October 31, from 5:30 to 8:30 p.m., with the event listing giving 1724 Orleans Ave. as the location.

Terranova's is now in year 101 of the family business, and its owners and Dué's frequently send customers to each other's counter for the other shop's specialty.

At Francher Perrin Group, we pay attention to how old buildings like the Terranova grocery and the R&S garage find second lives, because that history often shapes what a Bayou St. John property is worth. If you own near Esplanade or the bayou and want to know where your home stands this fall, we're glad to prepare a free home valuation for you.