We love boiling up some fresh pasta after a long day and tossing it with some simple ingredients. And now we can do that with locally made Alfresco Pasta. Alfresco pasta is made here in Nashville in a nondescript industrial strip center with barely a sign. But inside is pasta making rivaling that in Italy.
Its founder is Chris Grissom a long-time chef and restauranteur who spent time opening restaurants in his native Mississippi and the west coast. It was there, in San Francisco where he encountered a “total Italian guy named Gabrielle” who was peddling the best pasta he had ever had.
He settled in Nashville in 1996 when there were “about 5 good restaurants in town” and worked alongside Willy Thomas at the Capital Grille in the Hermitage Hotel. All along he never forgot that incredible pasta from California. So in the spring of 2000 he opened Alfresco Pasta.
It started in a tiny 800-foot kitchen on Charlotte Pike which they outgrew quickly. The second kitchen was in the Nashville Business Incubation Program operated by TSU. The third move brought them to their current spot in the strip center off Fourth Ave. South in the Wedgewood Houston area.
What makes their pasta so good? Chris acquires it to a number of things, not the least being their Agnelli pasta machine. The Rolls Royce of pasta. It can press pasta at 2,000 pounds per square inch—that’s the pressure you need for the perfect texture. Also the ingredients, they only use Durum wheat from Montana. “It’s a summer wheat high in protein, which makes the best chewiest pasta. We don’t scrimp on that. It’s more expensive. But it’s worth it.” They are committed to using local products as well, including Delvin’s Farms Butternut Squash, Sweet Valley Farms cheese and Monterey Farms mushrooms.
The bulk of Alfresco’s sales are to hotels and restaurants but they now have a retail line as well. You can find their linguine, and raviolis and gnocchi at local stores around town. They also now do grab-and-go meals such as Lasagna Bolognese and Chicken Spinach Cannelloni that come in containers ready to pop in the oven or microwave.
Second is their staff. “The amount of pasta that comes out of this company is amazing,” says Heather Gray, Customer Service Specialist, and the only woman in the place (and who obviously keeps all the guys in line). “The guys work super hard and make a great product.” Consistently they get told it’s the best pasta people ever had. And that’s a good thing, or Saverio (Sav) Castelluccci wouldn’t be on board. Born and bred in Rome (Italy) he knows good pasta. Sav opened three restaurants in Chicago and settled in Nashville a few years ago. Plans for the immediate future are another move, into a much bigger space to accommodate their growth in the burgeoning Nashville restaurant market. And there may be a food truck in the works too. Stay tuned.
Check out Alfresco Pasta's Ricotta Gnocchi with Local Bacon and Fresh Herbs recipe.
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