It’s a late afternoon at Teodora’s Boucherie Gourmande, Cohasset’s brand-new European butcher shop. A young couple, in shorts and full-on Lulemon enter purposefully. They have clearly been in before. They deliberate. The gorgeous bacon wrapped tournedos? The New York strip steak? Or what about those delectable pork chops? The two confer. The strip steaks it is. Dinner in hand, they skip out swinging a neatly twine-tied package in compact brown bag. A step into Paris on Route 3A.

 

For Rosangela Teodoro this is the realization of the dream. A passion for fresh meat, sourced from family farms, animals raised with care and their meat presented with respect. She sources her meat from small herds she has visited, many are from Upstate New York, and from respected quality purveyors for specialty items like Wagyu beef. She insists that the meat be organic, fresh, beautifully butchered and in most cases stove or grill ready, oven to table, a delicious dinner with minimal effort. In a time where meat can be bit of a splurge, Rosangela’s goal is that your every bite be delectable, whether it’s a roast, a steak, a burger or meatball, or a fabulous concoction like her “Chicken Pillow” – an oven ready fully de-boned chicken, stuffed with Teodora’s own housemade chicken sausage and sage, trimmed with bacon and trussed with twine. A Saturday night dinner fit for guests if there ever was one. 

 

Raised on a cattle farm in near the capitol of Brazil, as an only daughter, Rosangela adored and respected her father who came from nothing to build a successful cattle farm and wholesale butchery. “I loved to watch him work. He loved his animals, loved his customers, and he loved creating big family meals with lots of food and where everyone was welcome.”  You can feel her father’s presence in the shop. There is his hat – a straw fedora that Rosangela will gladly put on. His portrait on the wall and his huge trumpet-like horn, made from one of his steers. Teodora’s is a shrine to him and to the virtue of buying carefully sourced meat. 

 

Rosangela first came to the United States after college. She toured the country and liked what she saw. She continued on to a world tour, country after country, paying special attention to the upscale food shops that are a fixture of European cities. The patisseries and the cheese shops. Clean and beautiful. The professional butcher shops with their perfectly presented meats and curated groceries. She took notes and began to think about opening a shop of her own. She returned to her home in Brazil, but ultimately, married an American, moved first to Belmont, and had a son. (Her son, Connor, is a ten-year-old fifth grader in Cohasset.) While living in Belmont, Rosangela paid close attention to the butcher shops in the Boston and Cambridge area, observing their skill and their customer’s preferences. And she knew that eventually, she would have a shop of her own. She only wishes her father had lived to see her manifest her passion. 

 

Rosangela‘s passion is evident in every element of the store. She transformed a dry cleaners into a chic gourmet store, and it was not a fast or inexpensive process. Huge walk-in refrigerators, an industrial on-site kitchen, shiny white tile walls. She delayed the opening several months to get every detail just right, from the gorgeous black and white tile floor to the gleaming refrigeration cases chock full of meat, dinner-ready side dishes––and a stack of cookbooks to help you plan the meal. 

 

She is a petite and vivacious presence, a big grin, and flashing black eyes, ready with advice on how best to prepare each cut. Her personal warmth allows each new customer to quickly feel like a regular, a friend of the family. Her two butchers––both young Brazilian men––efficiently process orders and constantly replenish the cases. But she is clearly in charge. The recipes are hers; the marinades are to her specifications; the presentation of each item clearly reflects her reverence for the adage that “we eat with our eyes”. 

 

Yes, you can buy meat at the grocery store. And it will be fine. Mostly. And slightly less expensive, but only slightly. But Rosangela‘s vision is that meat you serve to friends and family should never be a commodity. It should be clean. Top qualityand carefully sourced. It should be worth every penny in every bite. Teodora’s Boucherie Gourmande is a jewel box. It’s the kind of shop people will travel to from great distances in search of food quality that is hard to come by. Aren’t we lucky that she chose to realize her passion in Cohasset?