This story actually starts back in 2015 when I wrote a piece called “Private Dinners with Perfect Strangers,” about the restaurant-in-a-home dinners thrown by 320 Northeast. The owners were restaurant people who dared to imagine a new kind of dining experience, selling tickets for dinners inside their own home. This was before pop-ups really took hold and around the same time that Eatwith.com started establishing an international business based on this very model. Unfortunately, our locals were shut down. They were ahead of their time.
The picture that ran in the story (right) is important today, because it is a harbinger. Chef Matt Kappra and Megan Sheridan, his wife, were the forces behind 320 Northeast. Here, Kappra is cooking at one of the dinner parties alongside his brother-in-law Alex Dayton. If we take this moment and skip forward through six years’ worth of turmoil and fuss, we find ourselves with the same two cooks in the back of the Food Building, innovating fresh ideas once again.
Dayton and Kappra are behind Aliment Pasta Co., which is responsible for some of the best handmade fresh pasta in town. It is not a restaurant. Launched in the middle of a pandemic by two creatives who already questioned the form and function of the restaurant model, it really couldn’t be. “We started with selling pasta shares, like CSA, and that helped us get a footing,” Dayton told me.
But it’s not just raw product. Aliment sells meal kits, too. “It’s all about finding that balance,” Kappra chimed in, “between a restaurant life and something else. We schedule things now, knowing how many orders we need, and still get to have the creativity of making up dishes for kits.”
Meal kits have become, ironically, the way we get to have chef-made-dinner parties in our homes. Small parties, but parties nonetheless, centered around a purply beet tortellini stuffed with ricotta and goat cheese or spinach ravioli that comes with a shallot-and-lardon cream sauce.
And we need to have a moment for the lasagna. “I lost my mom about five years ago,” Dayton said, “and she wasn’t the world’s greatest cook or anything, but she made lasagna, and this is how she made it. It was always meat sauce, spinach, and ricotta, and that was it. She would do five layers, so I did six layers. It’s just our Bolognese, spinach, and house-made ricotta with the fresh pasta.”
I picked up one to bake in my kitchen. It was both homey and comforting, and far better than any of the lasagnas I have been assembling for my kid as we’ve hunkered down. He literally said, “Oh, that’s what lasagna’s supposed to be.”
That these two chefs have landed in Kieran Folliard’s Food Building is notable and speaks to their vision. “It’s like a perfect fit,” said Kappra. “Red Table Meats, Baker’s Field Flour, and Alemar Cheese all work well in pasta!” He pulled out a bag of flour and said, “I have no idea what this is, but the flour guys just milled it and gave it to us saying, ‘Here, try this and see what it does.’ How great is that? They’re doing semolina just for us to play with. We’re going to have a special series with that coming up.”
So, great product, creative fun, a loyal and supportive following, wickedly high-quality collaborators, and room to evolve. Why would they ever go back to a restaurant? “I don’t think we’d ever work in a restaurant for someone else again,” Dayton said as Kappra nodded in agreement. “But I wouldn’t say that we’d never own one again. Let’s just say that we have a couple of creative ideas of what this could grow into.” I bet.
Food Building, Northeast, alimentpasta.co
April 29, 2021 at 12:00PM
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How Aliment Pasta Co. Is Re-noodling the Restaurant Game - Mpls.St.Paul Magazine
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