Photos by Joyelle West

Pasta is what drives Danielle Glantz these days, but it could have easily been something else. A former Division I college athlete, she is a classically trained chef who started her career at Chez Panisse, two domains a person simply does not attain without fervor and a dedication to their craft. Have a conversation with her—which you will, if you visit her Gloucester shop, Pastaio Via Corta—and it’s clear that Glantz would go all in on whatever path she chose.

Wine, for instance. Pastaio Via Corta carries an extensive selection of natural wines imported from Italy, as well as amari and bitters. At the Culinary Institute of America, during a curriculum-mandated wine class, Glantz won an award for her palate. “I could have gone the wine route, but I love food too much,” she says.

That’s something of an understatement. Ten years into her culinary career, Glantz opened Pastaio Via Corta, a heritage-grain pasta kitchen, natural wine shop and Italian import boutique, in June 2016. A world traveler who traces her familial roots to Italy and the Fertile Crescent, Glantz grew up in western Massachusetts eating whole foods and Mediterranean cuisine at home. She has visited some of the world’s oldest cities in Lebanon and “literally got chills” seeing the ancient stone-milling equipment there.

Using sustainably grown, milled-to-order heritage grains sourced from organic farms within a certain geographic radius, Glantz makes upwards of 450 pounds of pasta per week on traditional brass-and-bronze extruder dies. More than a dozen shapes of handmade noodles are available fresh and dried daily, plus ricotta gnocchi on Fridays after 1pm, and filled pastas in rotating, regionally inspired flavors every Thursday and Saturday.

From the grains to her tools and process, to which kind of sauce would pair best with your pasta shape, Glantz is happy to explain: “This is an educational store.”

The guiding mission of Pastaio Via Corta is to provide “good food from good people,” Glantz says. It may have started with heritage grains and pasta, but it’s led to all manner of real Italian products. The store’s shelves are enticingly stacked with the likes of a zippy olive oil shipped in from a half-century-old, UNESCO-protected olive grove in Umbria, and tins of Sicilian bluefin tuna hand-cut and packaged by a fourth-generation fisher and canner. Pounds of hardy spinach grown on the North Shore, slabs of peppery Tuscan-style pancetta from New York, and other staples fill the coolers.

“If I’m not making it, then I’m finding the best people that make it in the way that I would do it,” Glantz says. Of the producers her shop carries, she says, “We all have the same ideas about food, and Mother Nature.”

Glantz sees her own passion reflected in Italy’s craftspeople. That’s why she goes all in on every winemaker she brings into the shop by carrying their entire portfolio. “To curate [just] one bottle from one producer, it’s not going to support them,” she says. She visits Italy annually, spending time on farms and vineyards. Checking up on producers helps keep the store’s collection honest, and it also results in at least a story or two to go with every product she stocks. “It’s my duty as a chef, once I learn something new, to show people,” she says.

Upon reopening after its usual winter break in late March 2020, Pastaio Via Corta implemented capacity limits inside and a Pasta Hotline for curbside pickup. Glantz had returned from Rome on March 8, just the day before Italy fully locked down due to the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. “I saw all the precautions that all the stores were taking,” she says, and she brought them back to the people of Gloucester.

The two years since then have been an ultramarathon for Glantz, who has struggled to find and retain employees, she says. But Pastaio Via Corta is Glantz’s life, and she has no intention of compromising what it takes to run it her way.

123 Main St., Gloucester
978.868.5005
pastaioviacorta.com