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Pasta Supply Company opened recently on 22nd Street in the space left behind by Dumpling Club. This is owner Chef Anthony Strong’s (formerly of Locanda) third venture in the Mission. He opened Prairie in late 2018 just a few blocks away, only to close during the pandemic, after pivoting for a few months as a general store for the neighborhood when it was badly needed.
Alas, Prairie became another culinary victim of the pandemic, just as it was finding its feet. However, Chef Strong took that same general store approach and opened Pasta Supply Company in Richmond in 2023 – a retail store with a tiny kitchen that has been offering up housemade pasta and sauces to go, plus a dinner service.
Its second outpost in the Mission has a larger kitchen and serves as a retail store too, with a dazzling array of 30-ish types of gorgeous fresh and dried pasta and 15 or so sauces available to go from the vitrine, homemade Pan’terra bread, flavored butters, olive oils, vinegars, wine by the bottle, and exotica such as black truffle balsamic, mushroom garum, and anchovy juice. There’s a lovely, bright space with seating for maybe 25 people.
As the in-house dinner service had not yet begun on my first visit, I picked up dinner for the BF and I, opting for two fresh pastas, the Veal Triangoli and the Spring Pea Mezzaluna. To go with, I got a spicy vodka sauce and the fava pesto.
Each sauce (and each pasta, for that matter) describes its ingredients on the packaging and provides suggested pairings – for instance, they suggest the sage brown butter or lemon oil with the mezzaluna, but I thought I’d go a little rogue and see what else might work with each pasta. Each box of noodles is meant to feed two, but we found we had leftovers of everything. I also picked up a pack of Lil’ Juicy Meatballs in marinara, a loaf of bread, and for dessert, a Dandelion chocolate panna cotta.
The pesto was bright, garlicky, and definitely gave off a fresh fava and herbs, Spring-y vibe. We paired this with the mezzaluna. The little half-moons had a good texture, but unfortunately, I found the filling needed seasoning, so perhaps they would have been better with the browned butter after all. The filling also had an odd, rather floral note – perhaps the mint? – which I did not mind but the BF did.
The spicy vodka sauce was indeed spicier than any vodka sauce we’d had and was not quite as creamy as we’re used to. I might have been tempted to call this an arrabiata instead of a typical vodka sauce, as it had a distinct pepperiness to it. I liked it fine, the BF did not.
As for the veal triangoli, while I loved the flavor, I believe the BF was a little too exuberant in boiling them, and a few burst into the cooking water, losing their delicate filling. Still, in the ones that made it through intact, I could taste a hint of a not-unwelcome funk, realizing later that there were sweetbreads in with the veal breast and ricotta. I appreciated the nuanced flavor and would probably have preferred them with a less assertive sauce for the full impact. The meatballs were a bit dense for our taste – we like a much more tender polpetta – but flavorful, and we both liked the marinara sauce more than the vodka sauce.
Finally, dessert:
The panna cotta – described as containing “expensive chocolate” – probably should have been kept refrigerated because the Earl Gray topping had melted by the time we got to it. Still, we enjoyed the combination of the tea and chocolate flavors, and I especially liked the coco nibs topping, which gave a nice, nutty crunch to the creamy dessert. A really pleasing finish.
Not an unmitigated success, but they’d just opened here, and I was eager to try some of their non-pasta dishes in-house.
A week-and-a-half into their in-house service, a friend and I visited for a sit-down dinner. Pasta Supply’s model is quite different from other restaurants in a few ways. First, you order at the door, are seated, and then served your meal just like at any other restaurant (and you can order more from the table). I ordered a glass of wine while I waited (a juicy but dry – can’t it be both? – Montepulciano that I loved so well I ordered it twice), in an area where you can stand while you wait so that you don’t have to be out in our San Francisco chilly summer air.
Our server/chef (not Strong) counseled us on our order – had we heard about the Hot Mess Spaghetti & Meatballs? We had not but were soon regaled with a steamy tale of pasta tossed with their proprietary garlic butter, lemon and chili oil, and then that concoction would be poured over the meatballs too. Madonna! This sounded decadent in the extreme, and if I’d not already tried the meatballs I might have been tempted. Instead, we stuck to our guns and placed our order: antipasta of sour cream and onion burrata, because it sounded more interesting than salad (although the salad would have been great with all the carbs), rigatoni with lamb ragu, and salt cod “plumpers.” I went further into the carb-zone and spur-of-the-moment ordered the housemade bread with “miracle” lardo, too.
The sour cream & onion burrata was a dairy delight.
Not overly oniony, rather subtle, lusciously creamy with bright notes of lemon zest and good extra virgin olive oil, served with warm, toasty bread. We devoured this.
My impulse order surprised me, as I was only used to seeing lardo as a paper thin, melty sheath of pure pork fat melting into bread.
I pulled our server over and asked what the deal was with this lardo – there was clearly actual flesh in it. He explained that the lardo they sourced from Golden Gate Meats did indeed have bits of meat in it, and they blended it with spices and herbs, arriving at a luscious amalgamation of rich, pork fat juiciness that managed to be neither overpowering nor heavy handed. Veramente un miracolo!
The lamb ragu and rigatoni came next.
At first, we felt that there was maybe not enough ragu for the pasta, although I found the pasta perfectly al dente. The sauce itself was not overly lamby, and the longer the dish sat, the more we enjoyed it. The flecks of mint balanced the richness. In the end, this is a dish I wish I could order for take-out, just as it is. Really, a quite delicious, homey show-stopper.
Next, the salt cod plumpers:
Quite a large portion of inky black, round ravioli with crimped edges, but my experience of their filled pastas had me wishing they were thinner-skinned, the edges a little silkier. The sauce, however – a puttanesca with lemon oil – was excellent. Bright notes of lemon, a punchy tomato sauce, piquant olives, fat capers, a little celery – it was all there. The pasta itself was a bit dense, as feared, with just a faint hint of squid ink. The filling, while nicely creamy, lacked the expected assertiveness of briny salt cod. My friend found it bland. And while these critiques did not stop us from eating every last plumper, I wanted it to be better. This dish would be wonderful with just a tweak or two.
At first blush, even though there is a sense of hit-or-miss quality to the dishes, the Pasta Supply Company feels like it has legs. It’s an inviting, casual space, the servers are all warm, knowledgeable, and readily amenable to offering up information, and when the food hits, it hits high. Consistency is what we’re after, and I’m hopeful Pasta Supply can achieve this and become a neighborhood institution. And I’m happy Chef Strong is back in the hood.
Pasta Supply Company
3233 22nd Street
San Francisco, CA
