This may sound like an exaggeration, but at least once a week I hear about Pasta Sisters.

I may hear the name in passing, read about them in an article, or come across someone posting about the restaurant on Instagram. Whatever way the restaurant enters my day, the point is that they do it. Recently, Pasta Sisters entered my day as I was scrolling the website for the upcoming food festival The Taste by Los Angeles Times. In preparation to attend the three-day food extravaganza (Friday August 30^th to Sunday September 1^st), I was eager to see which restaurants would be at the Paramount Studios lot and sure enough the name that follows me would be there.

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During Los Angeles Time’s The Taste, Pasta Sisters will have a booth where they’ll hand out delicious bites that you can find in their restaurants and will also be giving a chef demo on the food stage. On Friday August 30^th at 9:00pm, chef Paola Da Re and her daughter Giorgia Sinatra will give an Italian cooking demonstration to inspire audience members to do the same in their own kitchen. Before heading to the event this week, I went to Pasta Sisters to interview the restaurant’s creative director, Giorgia Sinatra. Sitting down with Giorgia I got to learn about the history of the restaurant, the single dish you should order on your first visit, and what they plan to serve during the taste.

Follow My Gut (FMG): Can you explain what made your family move from Italy to Los Angeles and what you learned while here?
Giorgia Sinatra (GS): Little by little we came here. Ten years ago, the first person who moved here was my brother. Then my mom came after my brother had his first baby and then I came to visit my family and I never left. We come from a country with a big family and food culture and what we realized is that the idea of Italian food in Los Angeles is different from food in Italy.

FMG: What is the food like in Italy?
GS: It’s usually very simple, affordable, and the quality is the main thing. Our standard of food is very high and everyone deserves a quality meal they can afford.

FMG: How did the idea of cooking for others come about?
GS: We were all doing different things in life. At the time when we were here my mother was working as a nanny and the family would ask her to cook meals for the kids. For us a meal at home is a full meal: you eat an appetizer, first course, second course, sides, dessert – my mom would cook the meal like she would for us back home. The parents would come home and see the meal, try my mom’s food, and they finished the food that was made for their children. She started thinking how food is really simple, but for them it was special. That was the first time we understood that with our food we could make something special.

FMG: What made you decide to start a business and then a restaurant?
GS: After she started cooking for the kids, the parents started asking for private dinners at their homes. I have a friend who owns a restaurant in West Hollywood and she asked me to try her gnocchi. It wasn’t really gnocchi. I asked my mom to make our family’s gnocchi recipe that we’ve had for over a hundred years that come from northern Italy. My mom made the gnocchi for fun, she brought it to the restaurant, we cooked it there, and my friend fell in love with it. My friend then asked my mom to make it for the restaurant and we started to make it at night in our home. It was becoming so big and other people started asking for it. We started making gnocchi, we couldn’t keep up with production at home, and we looked for a little kitchen on Pico and Arlington which is where we are now.

FMG: What challenges did you face when starting the restaurant in 2014 and how did you overcome them?
GS: Many people, even in the restaurant business, were saying “Pasta in LA is not going to work” or “People like glutton-free and they don’t want carbs”. A lot of people tried to turn us down, but I felt that it wasn’t just about pasta and the idea of pasta. I think it’s how you make the pasta, the ingredients you use, and making the pasta in front of people and pulling the noodles from the machine. The fact that people could see where the noodles could come from changed a lot in what people thought about pasta.

FMG: How are you making your pasta so affordable?
GS: I think somehow everybody thinks Italian food is expensive and that it has to be that; as if it’s weird to find a plate of pasta that is less than $18. But we buy the products and we know the food costs. We wanted to change the kind of culture of fancy Italian food before us and I think it’s our way to be authentic. We wouldn’t feel that authentic without these kinds of prices.

FMG: How does publicity like the Buzzfeed article impact your business?
GS: It was great, but it also almost made us close. Buzzfeed was what made us do the jump from Pico to Culver City, but it was a really intense time of our business life because we didn’t expect that. Buzzfeed was something amazing, but also something that at the beginning made us realize we weren’t able to finish the day with the food we were making so a lot of people were unhappy. We didn’t have enough people so that meant overwhelming employees. We needed to hire and train new people. Our company really grew quickly and as a small family business, we weren’t ready for that but being a family helped.

FMG: What’s the best dish at your restaurant that someone has to have when visiting Pasta Sisters?
GS: If you want to be part of the family, you have to have the Tagliatelle Bolognese. It’s one of my best memories of my family around food. It reminds me of so many Sunday lunches. I remember waiting all week for it to be Sunday so I could eat the Bolognese sauce.

FMG: What will you guys be doing at The Taste?
GS: We will be serving the gnocchi with a fresh porcini mushroom sauce. Pasta Sisters started with the gnocchi and it’s probably the oldest recipe in the restaurant. And we’re going to do gnocchi demonstration on site in front of the people.

FMG: What do you hope people take away when visiting you at The Taste?
GS: That they’ll be able to meet the whole family. When we only had Pico, we used to know our customer face-by-face and we could talk to everybody. When we opened Culver City, it started to be more complicated. We actually miss that. We hope to be there, meet people, and say hi.

If Giorgia said there was a dish I had to try, then that was exactly what I did. Once I stopped recording and put my pen down I went to the counter to get the dish that she said was the one that made any person feel like they were a part of the family. No surprise to anyone, the Tagliatelle Bolognese ($12.50) felt every bit like being welcome to the table in a warm home. Plated it was simple, but each spin that wrapped the flat noodles around my fork gave me hearty pasta that I didn’t want to end. While it didn’t take long for me to reach an empty plate I could honestly say that the journey to that point was a delicious one.

After chatting with Giorgia and even trying the must-have dish, I can see why the restaurant’s name follows me. Anytime Pasta Sisters is brought up around me it feels like  reminder that I should visit the restaurant again. Whether it’s through a social media post or a friend who gushes over their recent visit, just hearing the name will now serve as the universe telling me to go back. And when the universe speaks, I listen.

To see the full lineup of participating restaurants and to get your tickets to The Taste, click here!

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Address: 3280 Helms Ave, Culver City, CA 90232 ​
Phone: 424-603-4503
Hours: Sunday through Wednesday – 11:30am to 9:30pm and Thursday through Saturday – 11:30am to 10:00pm.
Social: Website, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.