Via Elisa Fresh Pasta Shop to Close

Elisa Gambino is closing her Via Elisa Fresh Pasta shop on Saturday, October 17. Though this news is crushing to many of the pasta-loving people in Atlanta, it’s good to know that Via Elisa sauces will continue to be sold in Whole Foods Markets. Now is the time to stock up on her pastas while you still can -- they freeze well. Visit the store through closing day on October 17, or place your order by the 16th. The store is open Tuesday through Friday from noon until 6 p.m., and Saturday from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. Via Elisa Fresh Pasta: 1750C Howell Mill Road, NW; 404-605-0668.

Also, don't forget about the pasta truck that will be at 1945 Colland Drive from 5 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. and at 97 Brighton Road from 6 p.m.-6:45 p.m. tomorrow. It may be a good idea to call ahead and place your order since this will be the truck's last night.

Holiday Gift Guide

Believe it or not, its that time of year again folks- Christmas season is just a few short days away. After we celebrate Thanksgiving, everything is fair game in shopping. This year consider ordering something offline instead of braving the mall on Black Friday! This week the ladies at MLA, including myself, put together a holiday gift guide to help you select the perfect gift for those important, but hard-to-shop for people in your life. The gift guide features a variety of items such as Jersey Naps, TSP Spices, and some other great choices such as Via Elisa Pasta, all of which can be purchased online. In this mish-mosh of items you will see some of our personal favorites and some presents the people in our family will be recieving for the holidays. If you didn’t receive The Dish this week with all of our ideas, click here and you can read it online! Happy shopping!

Time to Buy Tix for Les Dames Event in November

As some of you know, I'm spending two weeks in Chile in November. Of course I'm looking forward to it, but I just realized I'm going to miss THE BEST food event of the year! Should I cancel???

Seriously, Les Dames D'Escoffier (LDEI), of which I am a proud member and secretary of the board, puts on a great event at Serenbe every year. The 8th Annual Afternoon in the Country, sponsored by LDEI is held on Sunday, November 9 starting at 1 p.m. at Serenbe in the Chattahoochee Hill Country. Over 50 chefs, restaurants, caterers, wineries, breweries and retailers will be on hand to dole out samples under big-top tents. An enormous silent auction, decadent cake raffle, live music, hayrides and more round out the afternoon. New this year is a Friday night event - a very nice one at that. On November 7, "Evening in the City" will be held at The Mansion on Peachtree. Only 75 tickets will be sold to this exclusive event. The evening begins with a 51st floor champagne "view of the city" reception followed by a four-course Wente Vineyards wine dinner and a private concert by renowned jazz vocalist Francine Reed.

So whether you're a city slicker or a country bumpkin, as long as you enjoy good food and wine, I promise you will enjoy these events. Among the participants are favorites such as Bold American®,Ecco, La Tavola Trattoria, Via Elisa Pasta, White Oak Pastures, Whole Foods Market and Woodfire Grill. Please go and have some sips and nibbles for me!!

Click here for tickets to either event. Proceeds benefit Georgia's organic farming community and the scholarship fund for women in the culinary, beverage and hospitality arts. Atlanta LDEI is a 501 (c)(3) tax-exempt organization.

And yes, this picture is of some Dames having fun at White Oak Pastures. That's Angie Mosier, me, Cathy Conway, Carolyn O'Neil and Virginia Willis. See how fun we are? Tee hee.

Reflections from Alisha Bess on the Eat Local Challenge

As you may remember reading, our office took the Eat Local Challenge two weeks ago. We each planned a dinner that used all local ingredients and shared with you (and our flickr friends) the outcome. Well, now we have a guest writer sharing her experience. Alisha Bess is from Whole Foods Market Buckhead and is responsible for organizing the second annual Eat Local Challenge. Below she shares why this challenge was important to her and her overall thoughts on Atlantans eating local...

"It all started last year when I read an article about how writers from a local newspaper decided to eat nothing but local foods for 1 week. After reading about their experiences I was inspired to take the challenge myself. As I started talking to my fellow Whole Foods Market Team Members, we not only decided to do it ourselves, but challenge customers to eat local as well. And thus the Eat Local Challenge was born. This was our 2nd year of the Eat Local Challenge and it was bigger and better. There were so many highlights to this year’s challenge that it’s hard to stay focused on just a few. First, of course, there’s the food. The number and variety of delicious food treasures across Georgia could keep the most advanced culinary mind tantalized for days. It was a pleasure for my team and I to compile recipes to help people along the challenge. Our own writings, in addition to recipes generously contributed from local chef/writer Virginia Willis and various local producers gave us more recipes than we could include!

"In addition to the amazing recipes, this year’s challenge showed me a community more engaged in the local food movement. The awareness of gas prices on food prices has really impacted pockets and awakened consumers’ minds about where food comes from. Not to mention the recent food recalls and the abundance of information about the down right scary things that occur in some food production has no longer made words like “irradiation,” “pesticides” or “animal byproduct” a mystery. Never before have I heard more people say “I already eat as much local as possible. Between Whole Foods and the farmer’s markets, this is where I do all my shopping.”
"Whole Foods Market has always been a big proponent of eating local and supporting the farmers and producers who put their hearts into making the most delicious foods around. And now it is starting to make sense to others. And by others, I mean the tons of other retailers who have jumped on the local bandwagon. Local is the new organic. And as we know, trends sell.

"So although we may not have had tons of people sign up for the challenge, we were able to engage and continue the conversation about the ease and importance of eating local. So to the Georgia newcomer, who has never been blessed with fresh pasta from Via Elisa, mouthwatering beef from Harris Family Heritage Beef, creamy chevre from Sweet Grass Dairy, sipped one of Georgia’s award-winning wines, or had peaches, tomatoes, squash or any other amazing Georgia foods-wake up and embrace what it really means to be Georgia-grown."

Local Tomatoes Make For A Sweet Ending

To end the week of eating local, my roommate and I decided on a menu with a theme of tomatoes. First let me say that the reason I had breakfast for dinner at the beginning of the challenge was because my roommate was out of town. She is the cook in the apartment and I am helpless without her (thanks, Sara!). We hit up the neighborhood Whole Foods Market after a long Sunday at the pool. Since the sun had drained most of our energy, we decided on something simple.

Caprese salad with heirloom tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, fresh basil topped with olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

Via Elisa ricotta & spinach ravioli with tomato sauce.

The dinner table (aka our coffee table) spread includes fresh sundried tomato and basil bread from Whole Foods Market.

Vanilla Gelato Mio for our dessert!

Whole Foods Market angel food cake with vanilla Gelato Mio and fresh strawberries - yum!

For more photos of our team taking the Eat Local Challenge, visit our flickr page.

Marissa Eats Local

It was my day to take the Eat Local Challenge. After many hours of pondering what local product I wanted to use, I decided to swing by my favorite pasta shop -- Via Elisa Pasta. I always love to stop into this place because you can actually see them making the pasta so you know you're getting the freshest available, and because of the many yummy samples of Italian food out to taste. I've found myself on many occassions purchasing more than just pasta. They have tasty cookies, cheeses and olive oil.

I hardly ever can decide what to get because they have a great selection, and everything is tasty.

I decided to go with one of my all-time favorites -- Passionately Perfect Tomato Sauce and three-cheese ravioli. Simple, yet, very flavorful!

I rushed home to make a fabulous lunch for myself. And, here is the finished product -- 15 minutes in boiling water for the pasta, and only about 10 in a saucepan for the sauce.

Melissa Makes a Local Meal

Okay, most of you know that eating is my forte, not cooking. So the eat local "challenge" was doubly challenging to me. But you know what? It was easy!

I started out with a trip to Via Elisa Fresh Pasta. Got my fave: porcini ravioli. Anyone can make this and it's super delicious. You just boil the water, put the raviolis in carefully, stir once, wait 10 minutes and it's ready. Yes! I chose one of Elisa's sauces - Sofia's Sicilian Caper - to go with it. All of this is available at Whole Foods too.

Honestly, I could just eat the pasta and be happy but it seemed like I needed a salad or something green. I stopped by the Peachtree Road Farmer's Market and, while I saw many great products and even got a glass of homemade lemonade, I couldn't find the simple green that I had envisioned as my side. So over to Whole Foods Buckhead. They had tons of local micro greens from Sweetwater Growers and I selected watercress - my favorite. Then I found a yummy local dressing from Onion Guys. It's called Vidalia Vinaigrette. To add a little color to the salad, I included a tomato bought at a roadside stand in Alabama (thanks, Mom!).

Lastly I chose a wonderful red blend from Dahlonega's Wolf Mountain Vineyards. It was the 2006 Instinct. Delish.





I decided that my golden retriever, Norma Jean, should eat local if I was so I got her some homemade treats from Taj Ma-Hound while at the market. She loved them!
The Whole Foods Eat Local Challenge was a lot of fun and I'm going to try to do it more often!

Cool Loans From Whole Foods Market

Whole Foods Market aims to keep good things growing in Georgia at Harris Family Heritage Beef, Sweetwater Growers and Via Elisa Fresh Pasta. The company has a Local Producer Loan Program and, in Georgia, these three local producers will receive more than $500,000 in low-interest loans to achieve their goals. These loans pack a lot of bang in each buck, and each brings a bounty of sought-after foods back to Whole Foods Market shelves -- and ultimately to our plates.

Harris Family Heritage Beef at White Oak Pastures, Georgia’s leading grass-fed beef producer, was able to use the loan to complete a long-awaited on-farm facility designed to process beef according to rigorous humane animal treatment standards and to minimize environmental impact. Besides enabling White Oak Pastures to expand beef production and distribution of its 2008 Flavors of Georgia Grand Prize-winning products, the on-farm plant will nix farm-to-processing cattle stress and do away with the need for fuel-guzzling 18-wheelers to transport cattle. Sweetwater Growers, Inc. is using its loan to add two new greenhouses, thus increasing the farm’s harvest of high quality, fresh micro greens, basil and other herbs. Via Elisa Fresh Pasta, a genuine fresh pasta shop in Atlanta, has purchased a pasta cutter with its loan. The new cutter will enable more efficient pasta cutting, which translates to more plentiful pasta for you and me. The ingredients for the authentic, homemade pasta remain the same: 100% organic flours, 100% organic semolina, eggs from free-range hens and luxurious cheeses imported directly from Italy. Find products from these conscientious producers and others at area Whole Foods Markets and Harry’s Farmers Markets.

For more inspiring stories about the people and places behind our food sources, visit Whole Foods Market’s Farm to Market Blog.

Who's the Best?

Atlanta magazine's Best of Atlanta party was last night at the Cobb Galleria Centre, and, in terms of restaurants, it really was the best of Atlanta! All the hot spots were there, including Ecco, Fogo de Chao, the GLOBE and Watershed. Yum!

The Cobb Galleria isn't my first choice for an event like this; as my favorite GLOBE bartender said, "it has no soul." BUT, that certainly didn't keep the crowds away; by 8:30 p.m. most of the top restaurants were already out of food?!

Some of the standout dishes from the evening included GLOBE's Campari sorbet with homemade lemon sugar cookies, Via Elisa's sweet potato gnocchi, and Watershed's custard with blood orange sauce. I'm sure I would have loved Ecco's dish too, but it must have been everyone's favorite since they were totally out by the time I got there. Fogo served mini-bites of bacon-wrapped filet, lingucia sausage and beef ancho. The linguica sausage has always been my preferred cut of meat at Fogo, and it was just the right mix of salty and spicy to temper all the sweet treats of the evening.

Overall, it was a tasty evening out!

An Interview with the Pasta Princess: Elisa Gambino

Elisa Gambino, owner of Via Elisa Fresh Pasta, answers a few questions about her life outside the pasta shop. But if you want to know more about her pasta and how healthy pasta can be, read this article from yesterday's AJC.

What's your fondest childhood memory?

Finding a blue velvet winter coat under the Christmas tree when I was 10.

What's your most memorable moment?

Meeting Nelson Mandela during the first free elections in South Africa.

Who's the most famous person you've cooked for?

Paul McCartney and his band.

Who's your favorite singer?

I love Seal and think he is so sexy.

If you were on a deserted island and could only take one kitchen tool, what would it be?

I'd take my food mill so my sauce would be nice and smooth.

Do you have a facebook page?

Yes, I have one and so does the store. Sign up to be my friend!