Daniel Lee, 27, hopes to do for freshly made pasta what Chipotle did for hand-held burritos.
His Farina Pasta and Noodle restaurant concept, which he launched with his founding partner, Joe Liang, as a delivery-only ghost kitchen brand last year, is preparing to open its first brick-and-mortar restaurant later this summer in Philadelphia’s famed Rittenhouse Square, and Lee is hoping more locations will follow.
The two founders met in a pasta-making class at Drexel University.
“We had been talking about it, and we wondered why there were no fast-casual places serving fresh pasta,” says Lee.
Liang has since shifted his focus to other interests, but remains a silent partner in the business, Lee says. In addition to making pasta fresh on site, Farina Pasta also seeks to offer a global sampling of pasta and noodle dishes from different parts of the world.
“Pasta is basically just flour and water,” says Lee. “There are lots of different cultures that mix flour and water and press it into a noodle sheet.”
Farina offers a mix-and-match menu that allows customers to choose between several different pasta types and several different sauces, including popular Italian sauces such as marinara and alfredo and Asian toppings such as dan dan.
When the new store opens it will include a fryer, which the ghost kitchen did not have. That will allow Farina to offer items such as chicken parmesan and arancini, as well fried appetizers.
In addition to the ghost kitchen delivery business, Farina Pasta was also selling $10 pasta meal kits at farmers’ markets in Philadelphia, although both those ventures are now on hold as the company gears up to open its brick-and-mortar location. In the meantime, the company continues to offer catering.
“We’re just looking forward to having a space where people can come in and enjoy fresh pasta,” says Lee.
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