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Pasta making and wine tasting: from the pub to your office
Pasta Laboratory founder Federico Uliana moved from Rome to London to Bath, where he hosts pasta-making classes in the back room of a pub that is also a cooking school.
But the classes can also be held just about anywhere from your own kitchen at home to an office.
And so it was that on a recent morning, Federico arrived in the Bristol24/7 newsroom on the top floor of the Tobacco Factory on North Street where we swapped taglines for tagliatelle.
is needed now More than ever
Wine tasting formed part of the session as well thanks to a recent partnership between Pasta Laboratory and Paola Di Bella of Pop Up Wine for their collaboration called VinoTelle, a key component of their new business My Tasty Experiences.
Under Paola’s expert supervision, we mixed together eggs and flour, kneaded and folded the dough like our lives depended on it before sampling different Italian wines in the breaks between prep and cooking.
Once our dough was ready, we turned the handle on small pasta-making machines to first ensure it was as thin as required, and then affixed the handle to another hole on the machine to magically turn a sheet of pasta into tagliatelle.
In our small office kitchen, Federico then expertly ensured that everyone’s pasta was perfectly cooked, serving up our creations with either a pesto or tomato sauce.
Pasta Laboratory founder Federico Uliana lends a helping hand – photo: Hannah Tyson
“This is our passion and our roots as Italians, and we are very happy to share those roots,” said Paola, who lives on Gloucester Road and was previously manager of Penfold’s Kitchen on Upper Maudlin Street.
For Federico, pasta is a perfect food that people – whether they be friends, family or work colleagues – can make together and have fun while doing so.
“The nature of VinoTelle is to spin a bit of pasta out of the machine and also go through a journey of Italian grapes and wine,” said Federico, who worked in marketing, then starting a business selling pasta to restaurants before taking on part of the Richmond Arms in Bath for the city’s first cooking school.
As if by magic: tagliatelle – photo: Hannah Tyson
Federico and Paola are now looking to expand their My Tasty Experiences business into Bristol, perhaps converting part of another pub for pasta making, wine tasting and more.
Federico said: “The thing that will take us to get another location in Bristol or the South West is to find a current business that would like to do a proof-of-concept with us, give us some space in their premises who are willing to collaborate to do something different.”
Paola added: “One thing that is sure will be that connection between food and wine, spending time with people on something that they can really enjoy.”
For more information about Pasta Laboratory, Pop Up Wine and My Tasty Experiences, visit www.pastalaboratory.co.uk, www.popupwine.co.uk and www.mytastyexperiences.com
Main photo: Hannah Tyson
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