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Boston Globe
2 days ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
What it's like at Island Creek Raw Bar and Park City
Fish tacos are on the menu at Park City in South Boston. JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up Park City isn't the only new addition to outsize outdoor dining in the city this summer. A little more than a mile away, Advertisement A plate of oysters at Island Creek Raw Bar in the Seaport. Some are topped with caviar aged and packed by Island Creek Oysters. Ben Pennington/for The Boston Globe In the Seaport, where seafood-seeking tourists throng, the presence of Island Creek is a natural. I'm glad out-of-towners will get to taste some of the best oysters from the region, along with caviar, tinned fish, and riffs on fish shack classics. But as far as I'm concerned, Island Creek Raw Bar is mostly a service for locals. The after-work crowd seeks solace here, where a hot dog with caviar, a few beers, and a gripe session with co-workers help erase the annoyingdayohmygoditwassoannoying. 'I mean, I always knew they made more than us,' I overhear a woman say, leaning over the table and making intense eye contact with her friend. They each slurp an oyster in commiseration. Advertisement Island Creek always has a nice way with dishes that modernize New England seafood while maintaining respect for provenance, tradition, and flavor. Whether at the company's raw bars or its special Winsor House restaurant in Duxbury, menus always begin with oysters, of course. The Seaport location features Island Creek and Aunt Dotty's oysters from Duxbury, Moon Shoals from Dennis and Pleasant Coves from Maine, as well as clams and shrimp cocktail. Oysters come with cocktail sauce and mignonette; if you're celebrating, splash out on the oysters deluxe, six Island Creeks topped with caviar that Island Creek ages and packs. The company has also expanded into tinned fish. Its razor clams, octopus, tuna belly, and more are here, served with toast and accompaniments. A bluefin tuna roll with avocado and cucumber at Island Creek Raw Bar. Ben Pennington/for The Boston Globe Augment those tidbits with snacks — soft pretzels, clam dip — and call it a meal. Or move onward in two modes: on a roll or in a roll. The former means mainly hot dogs topped with fun stuff (beer cheese and crispy onions, crab with spicy mayo, the aforementioned caviar). But there is also a very elegant crab roll (and no lobster roll, a bold choice and a sound one because sweet, delicate crab is underrated in the roll game). It is served with very little in the way of dressing, so you taste the crab in its pure form. There's a citrusy lilt in the mix, along with poppy seeds that work surprisingly well; fennel slaw might be divisive, but for the pro-fennel camp it's a win. The bun, to be frank, is not ideal. It's a hefty brioche bruiser. One can just not eat it. It's a plate (made of bread) and you're having crab salad. Problem solved. Advertisement The other rolls are sushi. Island Creek partners with fish company Red's Best for maki, nigiri, and sashimi made with local catch. A Row 34 food truck on premises serves lobster bao buns and more. Ben Pennington/for The Boston Globe Food is ordered and prepared out of a series of repurposed shipping crates. There is also a food truck from Row 34, which has a restaurant nearby on Congress Street. The truck serves an entirely separate, equally fun menu that includes clam chowder, fried clams, fish tacos — and a lobster roll, of a sort. It's served on a bao-style bun with chile crisp, pineapple relish, and sambal aioli. Sip a glass of fizzy txakolina or crisp rose, a refreshing lager or IPA, or some sake with your food. There are also canned cocktails and nonalcoholic options such as Mexican Coke and Topo Chico. The vibe at Island Creek Raw Bar is "urban picnic." Ben Pennington/for The Boston Globe At Park City, there's beer and hard seltzer aplenty, plus magnums of rose and bubbles. But it's the cocktail program that stands out, with a list of refreshing spritzes and tropical potions from a prickly pear margarita to a Southie Sling. (Although Park City offers cocktails in pouches and cans, on my visit drinks are served in open cups.) The bartenders steadily shake their way through endless thirsty lines with the focus of pro-athletes; it's a feat to behold. The front-facing staff here is unflaggingly friendly and upbeat. The Adult Lunchables box at Park City features charcuterie, cheese, and accompaniments. JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE The menu takes crowd-pleasers and chefs them up just enough: 'Adult Lunchables' (a.k.a. charcuterie and cheese assortments), Caesar salads funked up with miso, Vietnamese-inspired poached shrimp and puffed rice noodles over cabbage, cress, and watermelon radishes. Fish tacos on purple corn tortillas come with avocado crema and cabbage slaw, wedges of lime and sliced radishes on the side. Why is the fish coated a deep orange? Its batter is made with Takis chips, fun and creative; the fish itself is on the mushy side. The smash burger is a satisfying one, two thin griddled patties layered with cheese, lettuce, and excellent pickles on a squishy potato bun blitzed with sesame seeds; you'll get it with fries, of course, cooked in tallow, very de rigueur. Advertisement Park City's smash burger is satisfying, made with two dry-aged beef patties and excellent pickles on a sesame potato bun. The fries are cooked in tallow. JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE As I wait for my food, I watch the orders come up: chicken tenders, chicken tenders, chicken tenders, fried chicken sandwich, chicken tenders with fries. 'Does everyone order the chicken tenders?,' I ask the staffer dispensing the goods to customers who have received their 'Your order is ready!' texts. 'Pretty much,' she says. Cabanas, swings, and picnic tables offer resting spots at Park City. JOSH REYNOLDS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE I get some to go and walk off into the night, biting into a craggy, crunchy tender dipped in black garlic ranch as the dance beats fade behind me. I pass a fleet of cranes silhouetted against the sky, circumvent a parking lot of broken glass. I'm walking in the wrong direction. Headed toward me is a steady stream of people, just arriving at Park City. The swing is all yours. Island Creek Raw Bar, 99 Autumn Lane, Seaport, Boston, Instagram @rawbar_seaport. Appetizers, rolls, and sushi $5-$35. Sun-Wed 11 a.m.-10 p.m., Thu-Sat 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Park City, 411 Dorchester Ave., South Boston, 857-225-2572, . Snacks, salads, and sandwiches $11-$42. Sun noon-11 p.m., Mon-Thu 4-11 p.m., Fri 3 p.m.-midnight, Sat 1 p.m.-midnight. Devra First can be reached at
Boston Globe
15-07-2025
- General
- Boston Globe
Chinese students flocked to Central Illinois. Their food followed.
For the more than 6,000 students from China in Urbana and Champaign, the wealth of products and dishes from back home can make the two cities seem like a mirage rising from the plains of central Illinois. Surrounded by miles of flat, green fields of soy and grain corn, the cities have a combined population of about 127,000 people and a skyline that rarely pokes above 15 stories. The area isn't anybody's idea of a major metropolitan center. It certainly isn't the first place you'd think to look when you are in the mood for serious Chinese food. Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up After a quick walk from the university's main quad, though, you can sit down to a faithful rendition of spicy bullfrog hot pot in a Sichuanese broth studded with green peppercorns. A nearby restaurant serves yangrou paomo, a Shaanxi lamb soup with floating scraps of flatbread that is a favorite in Xi'an. If you are struck by a late-night craving for stinky tofu in the style of Changsha, you can get it after 8:30 p.m. from a chef who dresses fried black cubes of fermented bean curd in a glistening orange chile oil, the way vendors do on the streets of Hunan's capital city. Advertisement You'd have to hunt to find these dishes in a major city like Chicago, 135 miles away, but they have become a fixture of life in Champaign and Urbana. At least two dozen Chinese restaurants, bakeries, bubble-tea shops and Asian grocery stores are clustered close to the campus. Along a five-block stretch of Green Street, the main commercial strip in the part of Champaign known as Campustown, window posters and sidewalk sandwich boards advertise dumplings, noodles and stir-fries in larger-than-life color photographs captioned in Chinese and usually, but not always, English. Advertisement The Golden Harbor restaurant, which has more than 1,000 items on the menu, in Champaign. Like many college towns, the area around the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has been transformed by a surge of foreign students, but visa clampdowns could threaten that. ANJALI PINTO/NYT Most of these places are quite new. Almost all have opened in the past 15 years. Dai Shi, a local pastry chef originally from Fuzhou, first visited Champaign in 2010, when her parents owned a Chinese restaurant in town. They had only a handful of competitors, she said. At the time, about 1,100 students from China attended the university. Now there are more than five times as many, and the campus area has become a little Chinatown on the prairie. New York University enrolls more Chinese students than any other school in the United States. But the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is in a virtual tie for second place with the University of Southern California, according a New York Times analysis of 2023 visa data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Related : Urbana and Champaign are not the only places where the surge in international students has changed the local culture and economy. But the area's rural isolation and unusually large population of Chinese students make it a striking example of that change. Advertisement In the coming months or years, they may also make it something of a laboratory for the effects of the Trump administration's cuts to research budgets and clampdowns on visas for international students, especially those from China. Feast in a cornfield College-age students in China have a nickname for the University of Illinois: yu mi de . It means the Cornfield. The university is better known there for its surrounding farmland and its strengths in STEM fields like engineering and computer science than for its proximity to crunchy Northern-style stir-fried pork intestines. Each August, hundreds of new Chinese students show up with no inkling that the Cornfield is full of foods they grew up on. More than 270,000 students from China attended American colleges and universities last year. Restaurants catering to them represent a new wave in Chinese dining in the United States. In Manhattan, the blocks around NYU and Columbia, which 20 years ago held little appeal to fans of Chinese food, have become troves of Shanghai drunken crab and Hong Kong-style barbecue pork buns. You can find high-level Chinese cooking near campuses in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Iowa City, Iowa. They are more cosmopolitan than the linoleum-floored joints in the old urban Chinatowns that started out feeding home-style cooking to villagers from Guangdong in the early 20th century. They are more up-to-date than the palaces of aristocratic Chinese cuisine overseen by highly trained chefs who fled the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and '70s. Aimed at younger customers whose memories of China are still fresh, they tend to be informal, fairly inexpensive if not rock-bottom cheap, and faithful in recreating true regional cuisines. Advertisement Dishes at Northern Cuisine include crispy pork in sweet and sour glaze, stewed pork belly in a toasted bun and wok-fried crispy pork intestine with dry chili, in Champaign. ANJALI PINTO/NYT Students in Urbana and Champaign trade intel on regional dishes in group texts in Chinese on the social-media apps RedNote and WeChat. The most useful sources for exploring menus around the Cornfield are the Asian-food-delivery apps Hungry Panda and Fantuan, whose vehicles, bearing a logo of an anthropomorphic dumpling, are as common on the streets as red-and-blue Domino's cars are in other American college towns. The drivers 'are all Chinese people,' Qian said. 'When they reach my apartment, they call me and speak Mandarin right away.' 'Everyone is buckled up' A year ago on the campaign trail, President Donald Trump proposed that all international students who graduated from U.S. colleges be granted green cards 'automatically.' After taking office in January, Trump chose a different path. His administration froze applications for student visas in May. When the process started up again a month later, the State Department put out new orders for stricter vetting of applicants' 'online presence' — looking for, among other things, signs of 'hostility' toward the United States. Consulates were told to give priority to applicants bound for schools where international students make up less than 15% of the total. That statistic at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is above 20%. Chinese nationals, who made up more than a quarter of the 1.1 million international students in the United States last year, face extra scrutiny. In May, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the government would 'aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students.' Whether tighter screening and delays will cut into the number of international students at the University of Illinois in the coming academic year won't be clear until September, said Robin Kaler, an associate chancellor. Advertisement Until then, faculty, administrators and local businesses are bracing for the impact. A significant drop could have a major economic effect on college towns like Urbana and Champaign. International students in Illinois spend $2.4 billion a year and support more than 23,000 jobs in the state, according to a 2024 analysis by NAFSA, a professional association for international educators. Tuition is the biggest expenditure, but real estate, car dealerships and other businesses also benefit. Diners at Northern Cuisine in Champaign. New York University enrolls more Chinese students than any other school in the US, but the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign is in a virtual tie for second place with the University of Southern California. ANJALI PINTO/NYT As more Asian businesses crowd in, the struggle for survival becomes increasingly Darwinian. Restaurants along Green Street can come and go in the span of a year. Now, their owners are anticipating fewer students from other countries, especially China, said Tim Chao, who owns three cafes with his wife, Shi. Until recently, Chao said, many restaurateurs aimed their offerings squarely at those students. If significant numbers of them aren't allowed into the United States, or decide to study in a country that feels more welcoming, 'the general consensus is that they'll need to change the flavors, change the menu and how they present themselves,' he said. For instance, the noodle shop that sells Changsha stinky tofu just added grilled meat skewers and other, more entry-level items to its late-night menu. 'Everyone is buckled up right now,' Chao said. Many long-term residents are hoping that their favorite restaurants stick around and stay interesting. 'This cultural richness enhances us all,' said Leslie Cooperband, a retired cheesemaker who lives in Champaign, after we shared some very good three-cup chicken at Golden Harbor, a Taiwanese and Chinese landmark so celebrated that an indie-rock band wrote a song about it. Advertisement 'It's like, wow, look at what we have here in this town of 100,000 people,' she said. 'And we're all better for it.' This article originally appeared in .
Boston Globe
15-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
From Dorito rolls to eel tempura: Mexico City's newest culinary gem
I admit it can be dizzying. It's like arriving in a country where you expect one type of meal and are transported to another land entirely. For example, Dorito sushi. How could I not order such a thing? It sounds like a gimmick until you take a bite, and then it isn't. The shrimp and cream cheese roll, coated with crushed Doritos and gooey shrimp topping, is a perfect balance of creamy, salty, and crunchy with lingering spice on the lips. Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up According to Chavez, the inspiration for this and other rolls comes from Culiacan, a colorful town where everything is brightly painted — cars, tombstones, houses — and you'll find anything and everything in their sushi. Thus, the menu's Dorito roll, and the genre-bending Yapa roll with platanos, cream cheese, pork belly, carrot and jicama salad, flambeed bacon, and caramelized onion. Advertisement Not all cross-cultural dishes are rolls. Crispy tostadas are topped with yellowfin tuna, avocado, and ponzu sauce, and edamame are tossed in Sriracha and garlicky sesame oil. 'We make things our own way,' said chef Chavez. 'It's not a gimmick, it's real food. The base ingredients and technique are the most important, plus a pinch of salt and heat. If it's right, you don't need to fix it.' At Suchi in Mexico City, decorative plates sport mask-wearing Japanese super heroes. Necee Regis Sushi traditionalists won't be disappointed by a wide choice of familiar dishes such as hand rolls, spring rolls, tempura, fried rice, sashimi and nigiri selections, and California and spicy tuna rolls. One favorite, Himitzu maki, is a variation of a classic eel roll with eel tempura wrapped in silky avocado, topped with an eel sauce and crunchy arare — tiny, crunchy soy-flavored rice crackers. Simple wood tables are enlivened with decorative plates sporting mask-wearing Japanese superheroes, and red cloth napkins embroidered with more masked heads. The vibe is casual and celebratory, not stuffy, and creatively attired patrons seemed to be more Mexican than gringo. We played a game: Is he a famous Mexican film director? Is she a doyenne of the city's fashion world? We'd never know, but it was fun to observe our fellow diners in such a festive mood. The restaurant is located in the Roma Norte, on the border of Condesa, two neighborhoods touted for their bohemian vibes and vibrant culinary offerings. Tucked inside the Hotel Casona Norte, in a restored, 1920s mansion, Suchi is accessible from the hotel's lobby or directly from the street. 'I'm so happy to be at La Casona,' said Chavez, who has several different types of restaurants in other cities in Mexico. But his heart right now is all in Mexico City. Advertisement 'I love Mexico City. They have all the flavors of the cocinas of Mexico in one place. It is the place to be. When you are there, you are everywhere.' Agreed. Suchi, Durango 280, Roma Norte. Open for lunch and dinner. Necee Regis can be reached at neceeregis@ Necee Regis can be reached at
Boston Globe
09-07-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
In Lincoln, the community rallies around a farmer facing personal loss and the end of federal funding
He also faces another crisis. Last year, as with every year since it launched, the farm's biggest buyer was the Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up Jennifer Hashley, director of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, a program of Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, and Mohammed Hannan view young organic greens last month. The plants were being grown in a high tunnel, one of two on the property at Hannan Healthy Foods in Lincoln. MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE Advertisement Established in 2005, the Food Hub aggregates and distributes vegetables grown by more than 35 beginning, immigrant, and refugee farmers in the Boston region. It is an initiative of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, which was founded in 1998 to integrate recent immigrants and refugees with farming backgrounds into Massachusetts agriculture. New Entry director Jennifer Hashley explained that, thanks to four years of unprecedented support prior to the cuts, her organization was just beginning to 'transform how we do work and how we do agriculture and distribute food and get it to people that need it the most,' especially beginning, historically underserved and socially disadvantaged farmers. In addition to the food grant programs, in 2025, the Trump administration halted the Climate-Smart Commodities Partnership, land-purchase grants, and multiple initiatives linked to the 2018 Farm Bill. This sudden termination of multiple streams of support disrupted many long-planned efforts and, in some cases, left farmers holding the bill for purchases they had already made based on awards that were withdrawn. Farm garlic at Hannan Healthy Foods in Lincoln. MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE It's no coincidence that Hannan is the steward of a successful farm. He's always had close ties to agriculture. He grew up on his family's organic farm in Bangladesh, which was both a source of food and income. Hannan went on to earn a master's degree in wildlife biology, studying the country's ecologically critical coastal areas. In 2014, he gave up an opportunity to accept a Duke fellowship when his wife received a Advertisement Afsheen Hannan, the fifth-grade daughter of Mohammed Hannan, has an interest in growing and selling flowers. MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE He eked out a living at multiple minimum-wage jobs — Walgreens, Indian restaurants, and MIT facilities — before landing work in biotech, then as a lab manager at MIT. During the lean years, he yearned for the affordable organic food that was so accessible in Bangladesh. He wondered, 'How can I change my situation? How can I grow food here?' His aspirations grew: 'I need to get access to healthy produce. I realized that it is not only me. There are thousands of people here. They also do not have access.' This realization shaped his mission: 'Getting healthy food should be a fundamental human right. No matter whether you are poor or you are rich, everybody should have access to proper, healthy food.' Unsure about whether working a full-time job while running a farm would be feasible, Hannan spent the summer of 2017 volunteering mornings, nights, and weekends at Advertisement Volunteers sort organic greens at Hannan Healthy Foods farm stand in Lincoln. MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE The weeds were chest-high on the 2.5-acre barren plot, and there was no potable water for washing produce. 'When I went to see the plot with my kids and my wife, they were super scared. They were saying, Oh my God, what are you doing?! I was also not sure how to make this into a farm; there was literally nothing, [just] a pond [to] irrigate the farm — that's it, that was the only thing I had.' Hannan didn't have a car, so driving to the new plot he had leased from the town would be difficult. Yet, 'Instead of getting discouraged, I was looking at the opportunities. I came up with a plan: I'll grow veggies that do not need washing: bottle and bitter gourds, tomatoes, eggplants, peppers.' As he expanded, Hannan connected with the Lincoln community through an online forum. There, he met Tom Flint, an 11th-generation Lincoln farmer. Flint introduced him to Lincoln Land Conservation Trust trustee Jim Henderson, who let Hannan use his backyard sink and cure garlic in his barn. These were the first of many new friends who welcomed him to Lincoln. Mohammed Hannan of Hannan Healthy Foods farm stand in Lincoln inside the CSA shed where members of the program pick up presorted organic greens. MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE In 2021, Hannan expanded and leased a second 7.5-acre plot, using savings to buy a greenhouse, and obtained two high tunnels with funds from the Advertisement A member of the CSA program enters the shed where bags of presorted greens are packaged in reusable bags for pickup. MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE For Hannan, giving back is a core value. Even when he operates at a loss, he donates produce to local food banks. He launched a food donation initiative with Cambridgeport Public School, where his daughter attends, providing produce for its pay-what-you-can farm stand fund-raiser — helping fifth-graders attend the Farm School overnight camp — and donates 10 percent of his CSA proceeds and 15 percent of sauce sales to support the school — many students and parents also volunteer at the farm (his second CSA pickup is in Cambridge). CSA members Andrew Robinson and Hannah Frankel of East Boston walk out of a shed with bags of presorted organic greens. At right is stand owner Mohammed Hannan. MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE Most recently, Hannan's community rallied to support him when his wife died in March, putting in extra hours to lessen his load on the farm. This help, he said, has 'meant a lot to me.' Looking ahead, despite the termination of the food grant programs, the Food Hub will still buy produce from its 38 farmers, but, according to Hashley, 'it will be significantly less than [we] would have … were those funds in place.' She and her purchasing partners are urgently searching for ways to make up the difference. Organic greens are displayed at the farm stand at Hannan Healthy Foods in Lincoln. MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE She's frustrated by the loss of momentum — not only in direct support for small farmers, but also in building infrastructure, from production to distribution and transportation. 'Finally, the government was stepping up in the middle, saying, we're going to use our purchasing power to bridge this transition to help both farmers and people that we need to help feed. It was beautiful.' Advertisement Despite his family's grief and the precarious financial landscape, Mohammed Hannan brims with excitement when he speaks about his farm. 'If you walk in the tomato fields, you feel the smell of the tomato plants. This is wonderful.' He plans to plant fruit trees in undeveloped fields and transform the farm into a fully integrated, certified organic system with a closed-loop composting operation. Eventually, he hopes to find a successor. Presorted greens are packaged in reusable bags for pickup at Hannan Healthy Foods farm stand in Lincoln. MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE Hannan balances his full-time job and family responsibilities with 50 hours a week in his fields. The Trump administration's grant cancellations have disrupted his plans: 'My goal was to ramp up every season to see if I can do farming full time.' He asks, 'How can I go to the next step? How can I make a living from farming?' He's at a loss as to how to solve the problem of diminished sales. 'We can see if I can find more wholesalers. Or if we can sell more through the farm stand here.' Given his home and work responsibilities, he says, 'I have limited capacity.' Fortunately, Hannan's MIT job subsidizes his farm, and his volunteer community provides supplemental support. However, for many other small farmers affected by funding cuts, the consequences will be existential. As Hannan puts it: 'Small farmers like me … will definitely choose other options.' Visit the Hannan Healthy Food farm stand Saturdays and Sundays through October, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., at 270 South Great Road, Lincoln. Jocelyn Ruggiero can be reached at jocelyn@jocelynruggiero. Mohammed Hannan at the entrance to a high tunnel at Hannan Healthy Foods farm in Lincoln. MARK STOCKWELL FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE
Boston Globe
24-06-2025
- Business
- Boston Globe
In Leominster, Pastaland is as magical as it sounds
Co-owner Vinny Pusateri shows off some of Pastaland's wares. Jane Dornbusch Get Winter Soup Club A six-week series featuring soup recipes and cozy vibes, plus side dishes and toppings, to get us all through the winter. Enter Email Sign Up Pastaland's early history isn't well documented, but Pusateri guesses the original shop opened around 1974, in a different Leominster location. Pusateri, whose father worked in nearby Fitchburg, says he recalls visiting Pastaland as a child. 'I was raised on it, as were many in the area,' he says. 'It was a staple.' When that location closed, he figured the store had disappeared, but he later rediscovered it on Route 117, in a spot he correctly describes as 'not very visible.' It was under different ownership, but the proprietors, Stephen and Darlene Aubuchon, had learned from the founder, and everything was just as Pusateri remembered it. Advertisement Then one day, as Pusateri was getting his cheese ravioli fix, Stephen Aubuchon mentioned that he was retiring and selling the shop. One thing led to another, and today, Pastaland is owned by Pusateri and a longtime employee and partner, Ashley Bail. One of the vintage pasta-making machines imported from Argentina some 50 years ago. Jane Dornbusch Bail and her mother, Lynette Harris, do nearly all the hands-on work of making the pasta, meatballs, and sauces, with some help from students in a culinary arts program at Leominster High School. The process starts with preparing a dough Bail refers to as the 'crumble,' because it's, well, crumbly. Pusateri won't reveal what's in the proprietary mix of four flours — 'the blend and ratio is the trick,' he says — but he is willing to share that the dough contains just a bit of carrot, for sweetness. Depending on what kind of pasta is being made, it may next be rolled, extruded, stuffed, or cut. It is prepared fresh daily, and regulars know that if they hope to get a meatball, they'd better visit on a Tuesday. 'I make 20 pounds on Tuesday morning, and they can be gone by Tuesday afternoon,' says Bail. Most popular are the small cheese ravioli, but the larger 'gourmet' ravioli, stuffed with spinach or pumpkin or mushrooms, also have their fans. The light, tender ravioli are worth every carb, but the spaghetti and gemelli, with their distinctive, almost bouncy chew, serve to demonstrate how and why the best pasta transcends its simple formula. Visitors to the shop can witness the whole process taking place behind the counter; the small manufacturing area is open to view. In fact, says Pusateri, although Pastaland is a retail shop (with a few local wholesale accounts), it is licensed as a food manufacturing business. That suits Pusateri and Bail just fine, because making outstanding pasta is the mission. Advertisement 'We do get lots of great ideas, like add this or that, or become more of an Italian grocer,' says Pusateri. 'But instead, we have focused on keeping it very basic. This is how it's worked, all these years: We do one thing, and we do it well.' Pastaland, 557 Lancaster St., Leominster, 978-534-9400. Ashley Bail (left) and her mother, Lynette Harris (right), show off the popular cheese ravioli. The two prepare nearly everything sold at Pastaland. Jane Dornbusch
