Noodling Around -- Most Restaurants Don't Get Their Own Hands In The Dough To Deliver Fresh Pasta

Jun 14, 1992

John Hinterberger

IT MAY SEEM LIKE AN embarrassing question, but whenever I run across a good plate of fresh pasta in a local restaurant, I ask it anyway:

"Nice pasta," I say. "Who made it?"

It is, admittedly, a two-fanged compliment. It means: The noodles were great, but they probably were not made by your hassled kitchen crew with loving hands in a flour-dusted back room a half-hour ago.

Some restaurants do make their own pasta, of course. And they usually let you know it. Either the menu states it outright, or the imposing, imported Italian pasta machine is in full view of the dining room - as it is at Saleh al Lago.

Most places, however, don't make their own pasta - or, if they do roll their daily sheets of fettucine, they don't hand-roll and stuff the nightly rations of tortellini or ravioli. The reasons are valid:

Pasta is relatively uncomplicated to make but it's a messy chore, and when it comes to stuffed pastas, it is too labor-intensive, and therefore too economically unproductive, to tie up a couple of cooks for a few hours a day.

So most of Seattle's top restaurants buy their "fresh" pasta from small (usually) specialty shops that make it "fresh" for them. Is "fresh" fresh? Surprisingly, usually, yes.

A couple of months ago I started getting highly flattering reports on a storefront operation at 1520 N.E. 177th St. in North City called - at that time - Nanette's.

I met "Nanette" Thomas; bought a couple of packages of linguine, some sauce and three or four terrific breadsticks. When I went back a few weeks later, there had been a parting of the ways. Nanette had left and the name of the outfit had changed to Gourmet Pasta & Pastries.

No mo' Nanette.

But the rest of the crew, kitchen managers Nicole Deaver and Kathie Hicks and owners Bill and Marilyn Thompson, remained, as did the remarkable pasta recipes and a client list that would have most of the city's restaurant suppliers salivating.

More than 145 of Seattle's leading restaurants, from the Adriatica to Umberto's, bought noodles in North City.

This is not new in itself. Seattle has had fresh pasta makers, and very good ones, going back decades.

The first and still the largest is Mascio's Italian Specialty Foods Inc., 1440 S. Jackson St., which specializes in manufacturing truckloads of fresh pasta and sauces for supermarkets throughout the Northwest. Mascio's, owned and run by Jerry Mascio and Tom Geraghty, supplies many Seattle restaurants, but primary emphasis is on burgeoning retail trade.

If you think locally made fresh pasta is small potatoes, consider that Mascio's has grown to a $10-million-a-year food complex, and is starting up a new restaurant division. Mascio's does not sell product from its South Jackson Street plant.

Much smaller, but equally dedicated, is Carso's Pasta Co., 2808 15th Ave. W., which was founded and is run by a young entrepreneur, Dave Brown, who splits his time and emphasis between retail and restaurant trade. Many of Brown's excellent products are served at the various Restaurants Unlimited Inc. outlets: Scott's, Cutter's, Palomino, etc. Brown estimates that about 60 percent of his product goes to restaurants and the rest to the retail market. Carso's small kitchen does not sell to the public.

How did a family-owned operation in North City become a major factor in the local restaurant scene in a short two years?

"We did it by listening," said Bill Thompson in his time-muted Bronx accent. "Our customers told us what they wanted and we said: `No problem.' For example, take Ludgar (Szmania) at Szmania's. He's a wonderful chef, and he knows exactly what he wants. `I want it this way and this way and this way, and I don't want it like that.' They tell you exactly what they want. And we just do it."

Thompson's reason for going into the custom noodle business was equally direct: "I grew up in the Bronx and lived upstairs over a very popular pasta maker. I felt there wasn't anybody out here doing the hand-made stuff as well as I thought we could do it. I sold a rental house to get the money to start the business. I thought I could do it without raising any more money. Boy, was I wrong."

Thompson, a systems programmer for REI during the day, returns to North City and works alongside his crew long into the night. His over-the-counter pastas are available at the small, storefront operation - and there are two small tables for limited lunch service - but are not sold through the retail markets.

"You have to market and package if you are going to sell to the public, -and for the time being, at least, it is just too much for us. So we just deliver to restaurants, and we deliver six days a week. Four to five hundred pounds a day."

Where does it go?

Here's a very partial list: the Bellevue Athletic Club, Cafe Flora, Cafe Juanita, Cafe Sophie, the Columbia Tower Club, the Four Seasons Olympic, Domani, Kaspar's, Latitude 47, Mama Melina's, the Pink Door, Peter's on the Park, Ponti, the Queen City Grill, Rain City Grill, Ristorante Pony, the Rosebud, Serafina, the Stimpson-Green Mansion, the Edgewater Hotel, the Cloud Room at the Camlin, the Red Lion Inn, Latitude 47, Chandler's Crab House, Daniels and Chanterelle's in Edmonds, among several dozen others.

The pastas are made with 100-percent durum semolina flour and whole eggs. "We don't use any water," Thompson said.

The laminated pasta sheets come either plain or blended with a variety of herbs and seasonings - some are typical, some exotic, all excellent:

Spinach, tomato, beet, carrot, pumpkin, black pepper, mixed herbs, "Cajun," ginger curry, lemon pepper, parsley garlic, roasted red pepper, pesto, saffron and others, including Belgian chocolate, are available in six-inch wide sheets or cut into flour-dusted strips of angel hair, linguine, tagliatelle and fettucine pasta.

Prices range from $1.40 to $3.15 a pound.

The raviolis are all hand-made. Not because it's the most cost-efficient way to do it, but because the machines needed to make ravioli without human hands are elaborate and expensive. Gourmet Pasta's young cooks roll out each sheet, dispense each dollop of filling (three-cheese, gorgonzola, chevre with roasted onion and garlic, smoked salmon and an incredible smoked ricotta with pine nuts), spray a light mist of water over the first layer, lovingly lay down a coverlet of pasta (plain, roasted red pepper, black walnut (!), egg, etc.) and cut them by hand. They range from first-rate to exquisite.

I found the sauces at Gourmet Pasta (they really could have found a better name) to be quite good, especially the puttanesca and the marinara. The Alfredo was bland.

If you want to make pasta at home, it's really easy. I use the recipe from the Time-Life series "The Cooking of Italy" (left).

Do it right and often enough, and you could be in 200 restaurants by Friday.

--------------------------------------------------- HOMEMADE PASTA 1 1/2 cups unsifted all-purpose or bread flour 1 egg, plus an additional egg white 1 tablespoon olive oil 1 teaspoon salt (or a bit less)

Water

1. On a pastry board or washable plastic surface, make a mound of the flour with a cup-like depression in the center. Break the whole egg into the center, add the egg white, oil and salt, gather together with your fingers (yes, fingers!) from the outside, and begin to knead, adding drops of water (up to a tablespoon) if the dough is too stiff.

2. Knead for 10 minutes (oh, yes you can), until the dough is shiny, smooth and elastic. Divide in two. Dust with flour, and roll out each into paper-thin sheets. Let rest for 10 minutes. Roll into a floured cylinder, cut across into the desired noodle width with a sharp knife, toss to separate, and set aside briefly until ready to use.

3. Makes 3/4 pound, enough for four persons. They may be refrigerated in plastic wrap for up to a day. Cook in rapidly boiling water for about five minutes, or until tender, but al dente - slightly firm "to the tooth."

John Hinterberger's food columns and restaurant reviews appear Sundays in Pacific and Fridays in Tempo. Benjamin Benschneider is a Seattle Times staff photographer. Cece Sullivan of the Times Food Department tested this recipe.