“Here the menu is really, really simple,” Antonio Campanelli says. “But that’s because my grandfather taught me, if you want to taste the chef order something really, really simple. That way he can’t fake it.” With a sparse menu highlighting eight pasta dishes, Pasta Shop’s menu reflects his grandfather’s wisdom and Antonio’s own business ethos of do it right or don’t do it at all. So does the restaurant’s general marketing strategy. Pasta Shop opened without fanfare or signage last week in one of the buzziest areas of Bushwick: just past the Jefferson L stop on Starr St. “We don’t have a sign outside,” Campanelli says. “our sign is the pasta and the oil and the pecorino. That is what [our customers] will remember.”
Pasta Amatriciana.
Campanelli thinks this way for all his ingredients. The espresso brewed in his curvaceous Italian espresso machine is all Danesi. “I choose that,” he says, “because since we were kids all I drink is Danesi. I know they are from Rome, and I know how they make it.” This is how he’s picked all of his ingredients: olive oil and pecorino romano from farmers that part-owner Paolo Falciani knows from back home in the south of Tuscany; beer (when they get their liquor license) to come from a part-owner’s own brewery; wine from all over Italy, picked by Antonio himself. “We chose these things because we really know how they make it,” he says, “and if we like it we bring it here.” Produce alone Campanelli sources locally—driving to Greenport, LI on July 4th to pick it up himself this past weekend.
