Tutto Pasta in Fairfield: Fresh Pasta & More Made Daily

When Harry’s Liquor Store and the Fairfield Cheese Shop decided to tear down the wall they shared between them, customers could wander back and forth, tasting wine and snacking on crackers and cheese.  It was the perfect symbiosis of oenophiles and cheesemongers. It couldn’t get any better. But yeah. It could. And it did.

Brothers David and Andrew Tavolacci, who sold fresh pasta and sauces at their little and much- loved store in Georgetown, made a smart decision to move to Fairfield and share the parking lot with Harry’s. Now we can shop for the trifecta of food – wine, cheese, and pasta – without re-parking the car.

Tutto’s is where you go to purchase fresh pasta and home-made sauces, Wave Hill Bread, pesto, soups, and a variety of specialty foods. It’s a spare and open store, with a dance-floor polished floor, marble countertops, and a wall of crystal-clean windows. There’s room for tables, but Tutti’s is not a restaurant. Which is bad, because once you taste what they are selling, you will wish you didn’t have to wait until you got home to eat it. 

I used to make my own sauce. I loved the way it made the house smell; I loved the hours of anticipation. And I used to use generic macaroni. But I will never make spaghetti sauce again, and I’m afraid I’m through with boxed pasta. They spoiled me.

The Tavolacci brothers have the same attitude about their products and their customers as Harry’s and the cheese shop do.  They’re proud of what they sell, and they want their customers to know what it is they’re buying. They educate, they inspire, they sell.

“Everything here is made by hand,” said Andrew, while he neatly tapped down a mold over to create a dozen raviolis.  “No machinery,” he adds.  He’s right behind the counter. Customers can watch him make pasta all day long – from mixing the dough to cutting strands of fettuccini.

While he feeds dough into a sparkling stainless steel pasta roller and guides the sheet onto the counter, sprinkling everything with semolina, his brother is stacking up clear plastic containers of their signature sauces. “Recycled,” David points out, tapping the plastic.  “Even the brown take-out boxes are made from recycled paper. We make every effort to keep our business green.”

In fact, you won’t even get a receipt for your purchase.  Everything is computerized to reduce the use of paper.  “If you need a receipt,” says David, “I’ll handwrite one for you.”

Left-overs?  I was thinking I could snag some.  David smiled, “Since we opened here, we haven’t had any.  But when we do, we donate them to food banks or the firehouse or police station. Wherever the community shows a need.”

Business has been great, through word of mouth mostly (excuse the pun), because the pasta and the sauces are so good; but the brothers have plans which will make life in that parking lot even better.

There will be a monthly dinner club. There will be cooking classes.  You can rent the space for private soirees and pasta-making parties. Wine comes from Harry’s; cheese from the Fairfield Cheese Shop. It’s a party for the neighborhood, and you shouldn’t miss it.

I’ll be there, because I’ll have more time on my hands now that I won’t be making my own sauce.