This week's edition of The Local Flavor features Paul and Dorothy Fidrych, co-owners of Paul's Pasta in Groton, Connecticut. They met one another in college pursuing their culinary degrees before working at a local restaurant. Realizing the hard work they were putting in, they decided on starting up their own business instead.
Inspiration came from a small pasta shop with a pasta-making machine in the window. They both had a desire to do the same, and wound up with a perfect location in the heart of Groton. With more than 30 years of business, Paul's Pasta has become a mainstay of the area.
Blaine: How’d you both wind up opening Paul’s Pasta?
Dorothy: We got married in 1984. We were both in the restaurant business and worked really hard. We decided if we were gonna work that hard, we might as well be doing it for ourselves. We looked around for a concept that wasn’t being done in the area and we came across pasta-making.
Paul: We knew at some point we wanted to open up our own business. Not necessarily a restaurant, but a business. Dorothy’s father had his own business and we wanted the same thing. I was always a self-driven type of guy. There was that pasta shop in Deep River and it had that pasta machine in the window. We thought we could do something like that and it would be more relaxed than a full-on restaurant business.
When we were first looking for a location, we were working on our business plans. We spent three months looking while fine-tuning what we wanted to do. We looked from Westerly to Norwich to New London. We were poking around and found this place with a sign out front that said “For Lease.”
The people who left kept all the tables and chairs in the restaurant. I talked with my wife, and we really liked it. It had that nice big window in the front where we could put the pasta machine so people walking by or driving by could see it. Not too much has changed over the years.
It’s a neat little location with a deck that overlooks New London and the Thames river. We get a beautiful sunset, too, weather permitting. You can see the clouds change colors and feel the wind blow. It’s wonderful.
Blaine: Running a pasta shop, was that what you both learned at school or rooted in either of your families’ histories?
Dorothy: Neither of us have one drop of Italian blood in us. We learned at school and on the fly. We were in Deep River and we saw this really cool pasta shop with a big machine in the front window. We said “Hey that’s pretty neat, we can do that.” So we did!
Paul: It mainly came from our own curiosity. My grandmother was a really good cook with her Portuguese background, but mostly it was our own interest. We both went into college wondering what to do and saw a lot of high-demand positions for chefs.
Blaine: When did Paul’s Pasta open? What was business like then compared to now? Any surprises?
Dorothy: We opened in 1988. It seems like there’s a lot more restaurants than there used to be. There’s a lot more chain restaurants, too. Back then, we wanted a restaurant that had a lot of foot traffic. We wanted something that had a big front window where we could put the pasta machine.
When we first opened, there were no tables. It was just a little pasta shop and gourmet shop. As the years went on, people wanted to eat here. We dropped the gourmet food and put tables in instead. We learned on the fly and responded to what customers were looking for.
Paul: Well, the biggest surprise is how many taxes and mandates the government has you go through. But no, there’s a lot of things that have happened through the years that have helped grow our business. Things we’ve adapted to as well, like the Atkins Diet. When customers wanted to shun meat and bread and pasta, anything carbohydrate-related, we came up with a small menu of non-pasta items.
9/11 was a horrible time in our nation’s history. With that, the Recession, the housing burst, the Dot.com burst, one of the things that kept up our popularity was our perception of value. We’re locally-owned, we sell pasta and food at good prices, and the local community knows us well. The community, in particular, has been incredible. We’re located in a neat little spot in Groton with plenty of business around us.
Blaine: What’s the process for making your pasta?
Dorothy: The dough is all basically the same. It’s a combination of durum flour, semolina flour, eggs and water. It’s mixed in the hopper and rolled out. We roll it out into sheets and cut it with the pasta machine. We use all our pasta on the menu for customers looking to order meals.
You can either get a freshly-cooked meal or raw pasta and sauce we make from scratch so you can cook it when you want to. Fresh pasta is difficult, however, if you want to keep it. It’s made with eggs, so it needs to be frozen so it won’t stick together. It’s different than a box of pasta you keep in your pantry.
Blaine: What’s the difference in taste between fresh and boxed pasta?
Dorothy: It’s softer. It’s a little bit softer and cooks a lot faster. Usually in 2-3 minutes compared to 12-plus minutes with dried pasta. With our retail business, you can buy everything you need to make a meal at home, even meatballs and garlic bread. We’ve got everything our customers need.
Blaine: How did COVID affect business for Paul’s Pasta?
Dorothy: Well, luckily for us, we have a strong takeout base. As soon as everything shut down, we were lucky enough to have that already in place. We did curbside takeout. A lot of people weren’t set up to do that, so we felt lucky. We’re still doing that today.
The catering side of our business, however, was affected a lot. People couldn’t gather in groups. We would sell trays of pastas. People order as much as they need and come in to pick it up. We had to lay off some waitstaff as well but we kept a few employees on. People still wanted to eat and they were nervous, so the curbside takeout worked really well for us. People pull up and we bring the food out to them.
Blaine: Come May 19, outside of mask use, businesses can operate as normal. Is Paul’s Pasta set for that date?
Dorothy: We’re not quite ready, yet. There’s a lack of employees wanting to work right now. We’re still hiring and training and transitioning back to dine-in.
Blaine: Looking at the menu, what are your best-sellers?
Dorothy: Our absolute top-seller is our Breaded Chicken Alfredo. We sell more of that than anything else. We have a nicely-balanced menu, too. We have traditional spaghetti and meatballs, lasagna, linguini and clam sauce, a few vegetarian dishes. We make fresh ravioli in-house. It’s a nicely balanced menu. Most things are cooked to order. We go through food so fast. We even have gluten free pasta made out-of-house for those that order it.
Paul: I’m proud of any dish on the menu, that’s the neat thing about it. Though one item that stands out is our Chicken Diablo. It’s a chicken breast marinated in mustard and lemon with crushed red pepper. That’s a nice dish, a little different than the other items on our menu. I think the diversity of our menu speaks for itself. We have a lot of different options for a small place. Our turnover enables us to do that.
Blaine: How much food do you go through?
Dorothy: I can’t even answer that question. We probably go through about 200 pounds of pasta on busy days. What’s been nice is, even with COVID, our retail business has been picking up a lot since more customers are cooking from home.
Blaine: Is there anything you want to say to the patrons who have supported Paul’s Pasta through COVID?
Paul: All our customers are awesome. The support we got during this whole period of time, from the very beginning, was incredible. They probably felt the same way to us as we do to them. I can’t wait to see them inside and on the deck again. There’s a lot of help we received from a lot of different directions, from federal to the local level. At every turn, someone was trying to help us where we needed it.
We really turned our restaurant a different direction for the whole year and now we have to turn it back, bring back dine-in. I’m truly grateful to our customers and to all the health workers, too. Most of us are vaccinated here and that’s going in the right direction as well. We just need a bit more time to rehire the staff we lost.
Dorothy: We have so many regular customers with 33 years in business. They’ve been coming in for curbside takeout and we miss seeing their faces coming in to the restaurant. We’re just asking our patrons to be patient. We’ll have our dine-in open soon. We just ask to be patient while we get everything set up. It’s not a switch that will turn on come May 19. There’s a process to get ready after being closed for dine-in for over a year.
Paul: We just ask them to be patient. Once we reopen for dine-in, there’s gonna be some bumps in the road and glitches. Just come on down, enjoy the menu.
The Link LonkMay 05, 2021 at 11:49PM
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More than 30 years of success: Paul's Pasta brings the best in Italian cuisine to Groton - Norwich Bulletin
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