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7.9

The Italian Homemade Company

PastaItalian

North Beach

$$$$Perfect For:Casual Weeknight DinnerDeliveryDining SoloLunchSerious Take-Out Operation
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The Italian Homemade has three locations around the city, but the one in North Beach is a little different than the others (and is one of our favorite places to drop into whenever we need a pasta fix). All of the food is served on paper plates, their soundtrack of Italian disco always makes us want to dance like we’re in a deleted scene from Mamma Mia!, and if you peek behind the cash register into the “Pasta Lab,” you can see employees making trays of fresh pasta. From open to close, it’s buzzing with a combination of tourists who walked in off Columbus and people from the neighborhood grabbing a quick bite. But even when there’s a line stretching out the door, it moves fast and you’ll be glad you waited it out once your food arrives.

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photo credit: Haley Heramb

While everything on the menu is solid, you come here for the pasta. It’s a mix-and-match scenario of a few different pastas they make fresh every day and your choice of one of seven sauces. From tagliatelle with a heavy pork and beef bolognese to salty prosciutto-filled tortellini with pesto or butter and sage, it’s all good enough that you’ll chuckle a little when you think about eating something you like this much off a paper plate. The price usually hovers around $14 per order, and for that you’ll get enough noodles and sauce piled up and covered in parmigiano to feed two hungry people - even though you’re going to want it all to yourself.

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photo credit: Haley Heramb

There are also salads with bresaola or buffalo mozzarella and piadina sandwiches wrapped in a thin flatbread. They’re stuffed with things like mortadella and scamorza, and are a good thing to swap in when you want a break from pasta, assuming that’s something that happens from time to time.

Stopping in here for lunch on a random Wednesday works just as well as coming on a Friday night before checking out a show at Cobb’s or Bimbo’s. Plus, it’s a great place to get takeout from if your sweatpants feel like they’re sewed to your couch on a Sunday afternoon.

Food Rundown

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Piadana Nina

We wish the late-night food carts outside bars sold these cracker-like flatbreads stuffed with scamorza and salty mortadella. But since this place closes at 9pm, we usually get it for lunch when we want something smaller than a big plate of pasta.

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Bresaola Salad

This is a simple arugula salad with thin slices of bresaola, cherry tomatoes, and balsamic vinegar. There’s enough meat on here to feel like you got a charcuterie board and enough salad to make you feel like you’re offsetting the cured meat.

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Bolognese

This super beefy and porky tomato sauce will fill you up more than any other sauce on the menu. Get this with pappardelle or tagliatelle.

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Pasticciata

This mix of bolognese and bechamel makes the sauce less intensely meaty and acidic from the tomatoes, and while it’s good with everything, we prefer it with their slightly dense gnocchi.

Pasta Special

You’ll see pastas with everything from wild boar with mushrooms to fresh summer vegetables, and it’s always worth getting if you want to change it up from the one pasta you’ve gotten 30 times in a row.

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Meat Lasagna

The lasagna comes in a rectangle the size of a red brick, but is (somehow) twice as heavy. It’s layered with bolognese and bechamel, but the sauce is less mixed up than the pasticciata, so you get the full flavor of the bolognese in a lot of bites.

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Gnocco Roll

Imagine a world where you could get gnocchi dough covered in spinach and ricotta before being rolled up, sliced, and cooked with either marinara or bolognese. That world exists at The Italian Homemade and we’re big fans of the gnocco roll, which almost has the texture of a dense cake. The only drawback, if there is one, is you can’t really taste the spinach very much.

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