Pasta passport to success for food business born out of Covid lockdown

When Italian migrant Andrea Vignali was put out of work due to 2020’s Melbourne lockdown, he was initially in a tight spot. The chef had been working at iconic Italian restaurant Grossi Florentino, but his status as a temporary visa holder meant he was ineligible for Jobkeeper payments, and due to the terms of his sponsorship arrangement he was unable to seek employment with anyone else.

So Andrea had no choice but to branch out on his own – and his adeptness at the traditional  Italian skill of pastamaking proved to be his passport to success.

He began making pasta at home and posting photos on his Instagram account, which soon led to friends asking him if they could buy some. “I had already amassed quite a following on Instagram, so that helped,” he recalls, “but really I just started doing it because what else could I do? Everything was shut, and this was also the time when you couldn’t find pasta at the supermarket, so I started making it for friends and they were giving me money and I realised it could be a thing.”

In one of those rare Covid-inspired success stories, what started out as a home kitchen top enterprise then turned into the Al Dente online order business, and is now a storefront provedore and Italian-Australian fine dining restaurant, Al Dente Enoteca. 

“I was handing out flyers on the street to promote my pasta and Dani Valent, who is a food writer for The Age, picked one up and wrote an article on me. Another friend, Lyndon Galvin helped set me up on his online food delivery service Cookaborough, and from that I got a lot of orders. In fact we were sold out from the first week!”

The number of orders meant Andrea couldn’t continue making his pasta at home – but luckily another friend, Matt O’Kane who owns Coopers Inn on Exhibition Street, offered him the use of its kitchen during Melbourne’s extended lockdown. Andrea then sought out the assistance of other chefs who weren’t working due to Covid, and the Al Dente pasta delivery service was born.

From there, Andrea started dreaming big. He joined with his girlfriend Michelle Badek and friend Davide Bonadiman to create Al Dente Enoteca in Carlton, with Michelle as front of house manager and Davide taking on the role of business partner. “We always had this goal of having our own fine dining restaurant, not just pasta delivery, so we made it become reality. We now have Al Dente Enoteca which seats 60, and on the side we have our storefront which still sells the same pasta you can buy online from Cookaborough.

“It’s all going really well – at the storefront you can run in, grab your tortellini and Bolognese sauce and go, while in the restaurant we have a seven course and a five course menu which we keep rotating seasonally and we’re also experimenting with different approaches to cooking – we really enjoy it and it’s great fun.

“We call it approachable fine dining – when people walk in we make them feel at home, and we offer a different experience to what we sell in the store. It’s not traditional Italian cuisine but Italian inspired modern Australian.

“It’s still cooked with a European feel but for example we’ll dress a meal with native ingredients or use others which aren’t 100 per cent Italian. If my nonna knew some of the recipes she would probably get upset with me because it’s a twist on the old style!”

On the storefront side of the operation, the pasta is made fresh then snap-frozen in a blast chiller so when customers open it at home, they can put it straight into boiling water from frozen and enjoy an authentic fresh-made pasta experience, served with Al Dente’s sauces and premium Italian condiments.

“This is pasta you can’t buy in the supermarket,” Andrea explains. “Everything is made by hand – we have a section dedicated to folding pasta, which runs all day, and three boys who are always on closing tortellini. It’s a different, firmer texture which you can’t usually find anymore.

“We’re also supplying wholesale orders, and I think we are the only ones offering wholesale pasta made by hand. It’s still done that way in some restaurants but not usually by pasta suppliers. We change our specials every week and of course we have our classics available all the time – we’re currently making about 50 kilos of filling every week!”

Andrea attributes the demand for pasta to its appeal as a comfort food. “It’s easy, it’s effective, it’s satisfying and the fibre content means it’s filling,” he says. “At the same time, if it’s done really well, it has a great texture and mouthfeel.”

Having ridden the wave of success despite last year’s Covid challenges, Andrea and his team are looking forward to an even better 2022. “We reached our one year milestone a couple of months back and really it’s been great,” he says. “We passed our break even point after four months and we’ve been here doing what we enjoy.

“At the moment we’re closed one extra day a week to give our staff some relaxation time, but the storefront is open every day. And we’re still selling on Cookaborough – every week we deliver pasta to homes within a 35km radius, and all our shop items are available online for delivery with the Italian wine of your choice!”

Check out the menu at www.aldenteenoteca.com and if you’re interested in trying some of Andea’s creations visit https://cookaborough.com/customer/cookprofile/25/menu/3170