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For decades, Pittsburghers have worn a path up the Slopes in South Sidle to buy meat from Mission Market. And though the genuine old-style Polish butcher shop has been closed since Christmas, hopeful customers are still coming to the shop, waiting for it to open again.
Sitting in the closed market the other day amid nearly empty shelves and bare meat coolers, 73-year-old Don Wojtowicz was upbeat. Though he has closed his 80-year-old family business for good, the family tradition continues. The Wojtowicz's locally famous kielbasa, sausage, kiszka (blood pudding) and old-fashioned hams soon will be in supermarkets throughout the region, thanks to a royalty deal the family recently cut with Kennedy-based Silver Star Meats.
A good thing, since customers have been ringing the Wojtowicz family phones off the hook, wondering when they'll again be able to buy the family's traditional foods.
Mr. Wojtowicz learned to make kielbasa and Polish...