Crossing the road near the Borgo Palazzo newsstand, you are enveloped in an unprecedented yet intense perfume. It is the pesto alla genovese made by Andrea Caprile, born in 1974.
Together with the Urban District of Commerce, we met Andrea to learn about the history of his business.
From a surveyor with Ligurian DNA, raised in Martinengo and in love with the sea and its roots, ‘Il Pastificio del Borgo’ was opened twenty-three years ago. It offers fresh pasta made daily and sauces coming from at least three areas: Liguria, Emilia Romagna, and Bergamo made by Andrea, born in Genoa and raised in the Orobic land.
The first to guess that times were changing, that the economic boom of the fifties was leading to a new way of buying and that women were starting to have less time for cooking, was grandfather Giacomo, certainly inspired and urged by the growth of Star stock cube sales – ‘A real revolution of the time!’
In November 1959, Andrea’s grandparents opened their ‘Pastificio Moderno’ pasta shop in Sestri Levante and were among the first to offer ‘home cooking’.
‘At the time Sestri was a closed city, only devoted to work, and buying ready-made pasta was something to be ashamed about. The women who entered the shop wrapped the packets of fresh pasta in the newspaper. They bought it from the shop for convenience but hid the purchase.” Exactly what happened years later with the bags of frozen foods ready for use.
In those years of ‘artisan turmoil’, Giacomo on the one hand sensed a new need, on the other he put to use the large vegetable garden that surrounded the family house overlooking the sea. From that cultivated land came all the fresh and undoubtedly zero kilometre products for the preparation of fillings and sauces.
When in 1976 his grandfather died suddenly, the business was sold and no one dedicated themselves to fresh pasta anymore. Andrea knew his grandfather only though the stories of those who knew him and even more in the gestures, he learned as an adult, as a master pasta maker.
In the small shop with an open workspace in Borgo Palazzo, Andrea tells the family story with wide gestures and continually pointing out the many photographs hanging in the room.
The sea is always the real protagonist, in the images of Sestri Levante’s long beach and even more in Andrea’s dear memories.
The pasta shop’s website reads: ‘Currently at the helm of ‘Il Pastificio del Borgo’ (Genoese and excellent sailors) dad Valter and Andrea’, as if to say that fresh pasta is even better if you have some sea in your blood.
The smell of the sea remains inside you and becomes a true legacy. Andrea’s dad, Valter, has long been a route officer on oil tankers and he, who grew up in Bergamo, goes back to the sea whenever he can. Fishing and swimming in it until his fingertips wrinkle thus favouring a firm grip on fish and shellfish.
After finishing school for surveyors, after the military, Andrea, driven by the sense of duty and the need to do something, asked his father if he could go back to his origins and learn the job that was once his grandfather’s.
His father gave him his blessing and after a period of learning with some relatives from Rapallo, they decided to open in Bergamo together.
Here, mother Rosa Maria’s contribution will prove fundamental. Being from Piacenza, she opened them up to the wonders of Emilian cuisine.
Andrea brings a dedication with him to work that Bergamo, his adoptive land, has taught him. ‘The Ligurians are a little lazier’, he comments with a bright smile.
From the Ligurians – he says – he learned the culture of the table, the passion for eating but also for gastronomic contaminations. In his pasta shop you will find pansotti with prawns and salmon, and also the more traditional Bergamasco casoncelli or lasagna with meat sauce, that is, ‘alla bolognese’ (‘People often think they are two different recipes’). You can even ask him for the garlic-free pesto: he will make an inner grimace of dissent and then, promptly, he will serve you with kindness.