Questions We Get Asked Across the Counter
Everything people want to know about how the pasta is made, how to cook it, where to find it, and how wholesale works.
Our Pasta & Why It’s Different
The five questions Angelo gets asked across the counter almost every day.
Everything is made by hand, in small batches, in our own shop, not on a production line. The dough is rolled and pressed by hand, the ravioli and manicotti are filled by hand, and the pasta is laid out on wooden drying racks to dry slowly in West Haven air rather than being blasted dry in a machine.
That slow drying is what gives the pasta its texture. It is also the part a factory cannot afford to do, because it takes time nobody is paying for.
Because there are no shortcuts in it. Real ricotta, Parmesan and Romano instead of fillers. No preservatives, so nothing is being stretched to sit on a shelf for a year. Hand work instead of machine work, and drying time measured in hours instead of minutes.
A box of dry supermarket pasta is a commodity. This is closer to what you would make yourself on a Sunday, if you had the racks and the afternoon.
At the shop: 78 Fenwick Street, West Haven, Connecticut. The same place we have been making pasta by hand since 1986, using the recipes the family brought from Ruviano, Italy.
If you are in the neighborhood you can walk in and buy it a few feet from where it was made.
Honestly, people disagree about this. Some swear it is the wooden racks. Some say it is the air. Some say it is simply that the recipes came from Ruviano, Italy, and have not been “improved” since.
Our answer is less mysterious: good ingredients, old-world technique, and the fact that a family with its name on the box is the one making it.
No. There are no preservatives in our pasta or our sauces, which is exactly why they belong in your fridge or freezer rather than a cupboard, and why they taste like food instead of shelf-stable food.
Store-brand pasta is extruded, machine-dried and built to survive a warehouse. Ours is hand-rolled, rack-dried and built to be eaten.
The practical difference shows up in the pan: our cavatelli and ravioli hold sauce instead of sliding out from under it, and the pasta keeps some bite instead of going soft the moment it is drained.
Cooking & Storing
Every package carries its own cooking and storage instructions. Start there. This is the part most people get wrong the first time.
Start with the package. Every product we make leaves the shop with its own cooking instructions printed on it, and they are not the same from one item to the next. A thin dry cut, a filled ravioli and a tray of stuffed shells all want something different, and a few are baked rather than boiled. Follow what is printed on the one in your hand.
Around that, the usual good habits: a big pot, plenty of well-salted water at a gentle rolling boil rather than a violent one that knocks filled pasta apart, and nothing crowded. Save a splash of the cooking water, drain without rinsing, and toss the pasta in the pan with the sauce for a moment so the sauce grips instead of sitting on top. That last step is the genuinely Italian part: in Italy the pasta is finished in the pan with the sauce, never sauced in the bowl.
Lost the package, or not sure? Call (203) 387-5560 and ask.
Go by the package again. Each product is labeled with how it should be kept, and not everything is the same. Broadly: our air-dried dry pasta and unopened jars of sauce are happy in the cupboard, anything fresh or filled belongs in the fridge if you are eating it within a couple of days and in the freezer if you are not, and opened sauce goes in the fridge.
Because there are no preservatives in any of it, the freezer is your friend. Plenty of customers buy a stack on one trip and work through it for weeks. Filled pasta can usually go into the water straight from frozen with a little extra time, where the package says so.
Warm it gently in a pan while the pasta cooks. It is already finished, so it only needs heating, not simmering down. Then toss the drained pasta through it in the pan rather than ladling sauce on top of a bowl. It makes a noticeable difference. Check the jar for how to keep it once it is open.
Products
What we make, and what people reach for first.
The ones people ask for by name: cheese ravioli, cheese manicotti (the recipe that ended up on local TV), homestyle marinara, ricotta cavatelli, lobster ravioli for special occasions, and our air-dried spaghetti.
Pasta and sauce are what we make. Some of the extras we carried over the years have been discontinued, so if it is not in the catalog, we are most likely not making it any more.
We do still make special items now and then, usually around the holidays. If there is something you would like and you do not see it, call the shop at (203) 387-5560 and ask. If we can make it, we will tell you.
Give us a call at (203) 387-5560 and tell us what you need and when. Holidays get busy, so the earlier you call the better.
Ordering & Where to Buy
The shop in West Haven, plus roughly a hundred places across Connecticut.
In Connecticut, we are on the shelf at Big Y, ShopRite and Adams Markets, at a number of farms and orchards, and at specialty markets, delis and butchers, close to a hundred locations in total. Several restaurants serve it as well.
Monday to Friday, 9:00am – 4:00pm. Saturday, 9:00am – 2:00pm. Closed Sunday.
We are at 78 Fenwick Street, West Haven, CT 06516. If you are making a special trip, call ahead at (203) 387-5560 and we will tell you what is in the case.
Since 1986, approaching four decades. Amedeo and Carmelina Durante started making pasta by hand in West Haven using recipes from Ruviano, Italy. Their son Angelo runs the shop today, using the same recipes and the same technique.
Yes. (203) 387-5560 during shop hours is the fastest way to reach us, and it is how most of our regulars order. You can also send us a message and we will get back to you.
Wholesale
For stores, restaurants, delis and markets.
We do, and have since 1986. Supermarkets, independent groceries, farm stands, delis, butchers and restaurants across Connecticut carry Durante’s, and we deliver direct. There is no third-party distributor in between.
Tell us which items you want and how many cases. The minimum is $500 per order, and we handle delivery ourselves. The quickest route is the form on our wholesale page; we reply within two business days.
Yes. The full catalog is available as a PDF, with the whole range in one place.
Nothing here matches that. Angelo is happy to answer it himself.
Call (203) 387-5560Ask us anything and you’ll get a real answer
There is no call center here. The phone rings in the shop, and whoever picks it up has made the pasta.