You might reasonably assume that, to reach the greatest selection of artisan-made Italian foods I know, I just need to leave my apartment in Rome and head to Salumeria Roscioli or La Tradizione. Or perhaps hop on a train for Bologna’s famous fresh-pasta shops or Milan’s grand gourmet palaces. In fact, the journey is rather […]

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You might reasonably assume that, to reach the greatest selection of artisan-made Italian foods I know, I just need to leave my apartment in Rome and head to Salumeria Roscioli or La Tradizione. Or perhaps hop on a train for Bologna’s famous fresh-pasta shops or Milan’s grand gourmet palaces. In fact, the journey is rather more involved. I have to fly to Boston, then drive north to Gloucester, where the collection I consider unrivaled anywhere on the planet (Italy included!) waits inside Pastaio Via Corta, Danielle Glantz’s pasta kitchen and provisions shop. Back in August, I did exactly that.

Danielle did not assemble that selection by accident. Pastaio Via Corta is an extension of its proprietor, built through tireless research, unceasing curiosity, and an almost obsessive devotion to craft. Danielle has an opinion about everything, and I mean that as the deepest compliment. Thirty seconds in her company will teach you that there is a correct flour for the pasta she is rolling, an ideal pasta shape for the sauce you have in mind, and almost certainly a better olive oil than the one beside your stove. She knows who grew the wheat, when the olives were harvested, how the tomatoes were processed, and which family made the cheese. Nothing earns a place on her shelves until she understands  how and by whom it was made. There is no space for mass-produced food masquerading as handmade. 

That insistence on understanding what we eat is one reason we became friends. Neither of us believes taste exists independently of knowledge. Preference is personal, but a serious opinion must be earned through research, travel, cooking, tasting, and listening to the people who produce our food. Danielle has devoted herself to that work not merely to refine her own taste, but to create a place where knowledge deepens pleasure.

She gave that conviction physical form in 2016, when she opened Pastaio Via Corta in downtown Gloucester, MA. The premise was simple but exacting: make exceptional pasta from carefully grown regional grains and surround it with everything people need to cook exceptionally well at home.

Fresh pasta and bronze-extruded dried pasta may be the shop’s foundation, but they are only the beginning. The shelves form an edible atlas: San Marzano tomatoes from Campania, sea salt from Sicily, beans from Umbria, olive oils from Molise, cheeses from small producers, and amari that express the places where they were made.

Yet the shop’s geography doesn’t end at Italy’s borders. Danielle values provenance without confusing it with pedigree; an Italian passport alone does not make an ingredient superior. Exceptional wheat and vegetables from New England belong beside Italian cheeses and preserves, just as organic semolina from a Québec mill belongs in her pasta. The combination reflects an essential principle of Italian cooking: understand what grows well around you, seek out the people doing the finest work, and let their ingredients speak for themselves.

Her approach is perhaps clearest in the wine selection, which, to my mind, is unmatched. Danielle stocks natural Italian wines, but “natural” is not a magic word that excuses flaws or replaces taste. She has been known to carry a winemaker’s entire portfolio because choosing a single fashionable bottle does little to support the person who made it. Her wine wall is not a display of trends but a record of relationships.

The same principle governs everything in the shop. “Artisan” has become one of those food words so overused that it means almost nothing, routinely applied to factory-made products whose makers have disappeared into the supply chain. At Pastaio Via Corta, artisan food remains connected to an actual human being. Danielle’s work is  to ensure that their labor remains visible. This is education disguised as shopping. 

Our shared conviction that details matter—and that good food is worth defending from fraud, industrialization, empty nostalgia, and laziness—eventually found its way into a book.

We wrote  together in 2025 and published it independently through Parla Publishing. Much of the writing happened in Venice, often in bars beginning at nine or ten in the morning. Some books are written in silent libraries. Ours required cocktails.

The book documents seventeen ingredient-driven recipes, from spaghetti with tomato sauce to ravioli with butter and sage. Each depends on good pasta, real cheese, proper olive oil, and simple technique. We wanted the physical object to reflect those values, too, so it was printed in Venice on paper made with wheat fibers and bound in an olive-colored cover incorporating pomace from oil production near Lake Garda. Even the paper begins with an ingredient.

People sometimes speak about supporting artisans as though it were an abstract ethical position. At Pastaio Via Corta, it becomes concrete: pay people fairly for difficult work, accept that responsibly made food will not always be cheap, and listen when someone explains why one grain, tomato, or bottle is different from another.

Since 2016, Danielle has built a community around the work of fellow craftspeople with an intensity few  could sustain. She does not merely stock their products; she tells their stories, teaches people how to use what they make, and insists that their labor be valued.

As I left Gloucester, I considered the absurdity of the route: Rome to Massachusetts in pursuit of Italian food. It sounds like a category error. Yet no shop anywhere has brought together this particular combination of makers, ingredients, and convictions. Pastaio Via Corta belongs exactly where Danielle put it, and it is worth crossing an ocean to reach.

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