Mangia Mangia!

MICHAEL CAROSELLO doesn’t just love pasta. He lives it.

He learned to roll pasta when he was 9 years old, guided through the process by his great-aunt, Carmella Carosello. Shortly after high school, Michael Carosello moved to Italy, where he enrolled in culinary school in Florence. His father Louis and mother Madeline followed suit a few years later. All of them lived and worked in Italy, Michael Carosello in various kitchens and cafés, for about a decade. Now, he’s a dual citizen.

Once back in the United States, he met his future wife, Chelsea Lisiecki, in the Seattle area, where they worked for a number of years.

“We were doing all sorts of things,” says Lisiecki. “Mike’s always worked in food, kitchens, restaurants, as a manager of Whole Foods. I’ve worked in a vet clinic, the food industry, and as a printmaker.” (Note the hand-lettered signs throughout the store and on products.)

They relocated to Michigan, Lisiecki’s home state, and she began working on a master’s degree in conservation ecology from the University of Michigan. After graduating, the couple established a small organic farm and sold products at local farmers markets.

But in early spring 2019, without much produce available, they decided to package some of the homemade pasta that Carosello had dried in their home kitchen. “It sold itself off the table,” says Lisiecki. “People kept coming back for more and more, we got really entrenched, more and more dried pasta.”

“We realized, this is what we love, connecting to this food heritage, connecting other people to it.”

Twin events hammered home what Lisiecki calls the “harsh realization of how short life is”: the pandemic and the unrelated death of Louis Carosello. “We realized, this is what we love, connecting to this food heritage, connecting other people to it.”

They began the necessary steps to create a business fueled by their passion for the best possible fresh food and embracing Carosello’s Italian roots and experience.

The result: Carosello Pasta, a pastificio, the Italian name for a shop that specializes in pasta. Opening in April 2022, the store lives in a portion of the former Encore Theater, basically behind the Dairy Queen on Dexter’s main drag.

Open the door, and you’re in an Italian boutique grocer right off the streets of Tuscany. Inside the cheery space with its boldly patterned red walls, check out the big deli case filled with freshly made pasta: small shapes like conchiglie (shells) and ditalini (fingers), and long noodles like fettuccine and fat bucatini rolled in graceful knots. Carosello uses a traditional organic semolina flour.

“We’re gluten-full,” says Lisiecki. “There are people who make wonderful gluten-free pastas, and we’ve chosen to stay in our pasta lane.”

We asked co-owner Chelsea Lisiecki what she might recommend to a customer asking what to make for dinner without a plan in mind:

I’d want them to give our heirloom wheat spaghetti a try. This is made from a blend of regional, stone-milled ancient wheats and organic semolina. It has a lovely, toothsome texture, and the nuttiness of the whole grain really shines through.

I’d grab a jar of one of my favorite products in the store: Friarielli broccoli rabe by Maida, a small farm in Campania, Italy, that preserves their own vegetables in extra virgin olive that is also produced on their farm.

To prepare, simply cook the pasta for about 3 minutes in salted, boiling water, being sure to save about ¼ cup of the cooking water before draining. I’d saute some garlic from our farm in the extra virgin olive oil from Maida, then add the roughly chopped broccoli rabe to the pan along with the cooked spaghetti and starchy water. Continue to cook for just about a minute to bring the flavors all together. Off heat, add freshly grated Piave Stravecchio DOP, one of our favorite aged Alpine cheeses.

Here you have a meal that takes about 15 minutes to prepare, costs around $30 and will feed a family of four the best meal in town.

Above the pastas, jewel-toned sauces tempt you along with fresh, milky cheese. Shelves nearby are lined with packages of the dried versions of the pastas—but recently dried, unlike the stuff you get at the grocery store, which may have been sitting around since the previous Olympics. Another refrigerator features small-batch imported and domestic cheeses, and a third is lined with the beautiful organically grown produce from the couple’s farm, Sideoats, not far from the shop.

“People here seem to have an insatiable appetite for fresh pasta.”

There’s also a full supply of less perishable goods to round out your meal: artisan olive oils and vinegars, tinned anchovies and sardines, sun-dried tomatoes and tapenades and, for sweet tooths, locally made preserves, honeys and chocolates.

Dexter’s residents have embraced the shop. “People here seem to have an insatiable appetite for fresh pasta,” laughs Lisiecki. She loves when people come in without knowing what they’ll make for dinner and then leave with everything they need. “Anyone in the store—Mike, me, our awesome staff—will help you put together an amazing meal.”

Do they ever get tired of eating pasta? “Never!,” says Lisiecki. “We always have plenty on hand. It’s the perfect easy meal after a full day of work. When it comes to food, we’re both 100% Italian.”

Carosello Pasta:
3216 Broad St., Dexter;
carosellopasta.com; @carosellopasta

Nan Bauer writes about food, books and travel, including to Italy, a favorite destination.