Photo by Michael A. Gardiner
Spinach ravioli with marinara sauce
The restaurant industry pretty much hates Valentine’s Day.
Of course, the restaurant industry doesn’t hate it so much that they’d ever consider actually closing for the occasion. No. Instead, they passive-aggressively stuff butts in seats (albeit at 2-tops, not 4-tops), charge a premium for “special” Valentine’s-themed menus, cash in and prepare for the next time they’ll have to do this (Mother’s Day brunch).
So what’s to be done? Suck it up and fight for reservations for an overpriced meal? Play chef and cook a Valentine’s Day tasting menu at home and hope for the best? The former sounds dismal and good luck with the latter. Neither sounds like a particularly good way to focus on the love of one’s life. And ordering from Postmates, GrubHub, UberEats or the like hardly embodies romance.
But what alternatives are there? Good answers to that question can be discovered at Assenti's Pasta (2044 India St.) in Little Italy. Founded by brothers Roberto and Luigi Assenti in the early 1980s, Assenti’s originally supplied their parents’ Isle of Capri restaurant using their mother’s handmade pasta recipes. As modern equipment replaced classic hand tools and expansion led to the company moving to larger quarters a few blocks north on India Street, the Assenti’s business grew to encompass a wholesale fresh pasta operation, as well as a retail specialty Italian food storefront.
On almost any trip to Assenti’s, the pasta rack will include freshly made pappardelle, linguine, fettucine (plain and spinach), spaghetti, angel hair, bucatini and a selection of extruded pastas like penne and rigatoni. Lemon basil pastas, or versions with porcini or squid ink, aren’t unusual and the rack will even occasionally include fresh-filled pastas like Gorgonzola ravioli. Fresh lasagna sheets are always available.
There’s more than fresh pasta at Assenti’s. The freezer case sports a number of stuffed pastas and housemade sauces and meatballs. In addition to the usual suspects like sausages, prosciutto, salami and olives, the deli case includes such relative rarities as speck (think smoked prosciutto). There’s an open case with fresh Italian cheeses like Parmigiano Reggiano, Grana Padano as well as fresh Italian ingredients. Assenti’s also has a selection of good Italian wines representing a number of the country’s regions.
My choice? Spinach pasta with marinara sauce from the frozen case and some great Parmigiano Reggiano cheese (and a few leaves of parsley from our garden). Oh, and a truly excellent Vino Nobile de Montepulciano from Tuscany. Assenti’s fresh pasta cooks up incredibly easily; a few minutes in boiling water (how long depends on the shape) is all it takes. Over the years, I have never been disappointed by the results.
The beauty of this approach to Valentine’s Day is simple: it’s high quality, delicious and genuinely easy. Boiling pasta isn’t tough. Heating sauce is easy. Plus, mixing it all and plating it isn’t much tougher, and making it rain cheese from above is hardly complex. Honestly, getting the cork out of the wine bottle is probably the most trying task. The entire exercise hardly takes an ounce of attention away from where our attention should be on Valentine’s: our significant other.
And there’s a whole restaurant industry of people who probably wish they could do the same.