Homemade pasta course taught by world pasta champion benefits local Italian restaurant

A local Italian restaurant teams up with a World Pasta Champion to offer pasta making workshops.

An opportunity for Maritimers to learn how to make homemade pasta from a world pasta champion has arrived in Halifax.

Greg Gosine visits Trattoria Vesso frequently for lunch and dinner but this past week he went for a different reason, learning how to make his new favourite dish.

“I struggled with creating the shapes, but I never thought of even doing that until there was a workshop available to do it, so it was a real learning experience,” says Greg Gosine, pasta workshop attendee.

Attendees learned how to make the dough from scratch, roll it out, stuff the pasta and shape it. Of course, the workshop ended with sampling.

“How to do the dough first, how to pass by machine, we are going to show you later. How to sheet, do the sheet, you know how thin and fine it has to be and different shapes. How to do tortellini, cappelletti, rigatoni and fillings. How to do the right fillings,” says Vesso.

The course is led by renowned local chef Vesso and chef Enzo from Switzerland who owns and runs Fabbrica Pasta in Geneva, Switzerland.

“30 years of friendship, he was always in pasta, and I was in French, Italian kitchen,” says Vesso Mrakic, owner and chef at Trattoria Vesso.

The two ran events and courses together and two years ago they decided it would be beneficial to bring Enzo to Halifax.

“We always do pasta here and we really wanted to add something traditional authentic to be more Italian identified in Halifax, I feel like it’s a perfect occasion for everybody to have this,” says Vesso.

Vesso says Pizza is his first love, but pasta is his second so hosting his old friends from Geneva, Switzerland, was a no brainer and a chance to bring a little more Italy to Halifax.

“We share something, our passion, it’s a benefit for the restaurant and for our customers. We do a lot of things for our customers because we produce everything from scratch and we have real passion,” says Vesso.

The pasta chef Enzo taught during the workshop and what he makes at his restaurant in Geneva has only two ingredients, semolina and water.

The workshops aren’t just fun for Maritimers, they are also bringing in new business for Trattoria Vesso.

“More than half, it’s all new people, they had never heard of Trattoria Vesso, so very beneficial for us,” says Vesso.

With the fresh interest comes more classes which Vesso says are already in the works.

“We already have seven people booked for the next workshop,” says Vesso.

They are going to continue with the same class first since that’s what their customers are asking for but are open to suggestions for future classes. Vesso says sauce making seems to be common feedback from workshop attendees and could become a future class.

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