Pasta brought together Thomas Tilaka Kalb and Vanessa Tilaka. They worked side-by-side on the pasta station at Flour + Water, a noted dough-fueled San Francisco destination. The accomplished culinary duo married and moved to L.A. to open Agnes Restaurant & Cheesery. He’s Executive Chef and she’s “Head Cheese” at their multifaceted Pasadena business, named for his grandmother Mary Agnes, which serves unique dishes like loaded baked potato “dumplings.”
Agnes fills a century-old building that first housed a fire department horse stable. The brick-walled restaurant with high ceilings debuted in June and features twin patios, including a pandemic-era parklet with picnic tables out front and a plant-lined back patio that provides views into a prep kitchen where they craft pastas.
“Pasta will always have a special place in our hearts,” Kalb says. “It has to be made in-house. It has to be made with care and love. It must display proper technique and toothsomeness so the pasta directly correlates with the toppings, garnishes, ragù or sauce… By the time the pasta is put on the plate, it becomes one thing.”
Loaded baked potato dumplings ($21.99), served with "all the fixins," riff on classic Americana through an Italian lens and feature Kalb’s favorite loaded baked potato toppings. “Dinner at my family's house growing up was always the one moment of the day that we got to pause as a family and spend some time together,” he recalls. “On some of the most hectic days, my mom would whip together Baked Potato Night. Also her clever way of cleaning out the fridge! Baked Potato Bar became one of my favorite go-to staff meals as a line cook on those crazy Friday and Saturday nights before a bustling service.”
Agnes owners Thomas and Vanessa Tilaka Kalb with their dog. Photo: Stefan Merriweather
To make supple, stubby pasta rectangles, Kalb starts by packing russet potatoes in salt and baking them to leech moisture and to add seasoning. The team at Agnes mills potatoes to a fluffy texture. “We then add just enough egg and flour to combine and roll out into a sheet and cut the dough into the dumpling shapes,” he says. “We boil in well-seasoned water and plunge into an ice bath to halt the cooking. Then we cover them in olive oil so they don’t stick to each other. On the pick-up we boil in our pasta boiler, then sauté with bacon lardons and a sauce that is seasoned with butter and bacon fat,” coating rectangles with a savory, glistening sheen. They garnish with house-made crème fraîche, roasted broccoli salsa verde, and chives. Very few dishes at a “cheesery” would feel right without at least a hint of cheese, and Kalb showers this dish with shavings of Prairie Breeze, an aged white cheddar from Milton Creamery in Iowa, where his family has deep roots. A crispy matchstick potato nest rests atop the dish for crunch.
Dumplings have changed more than any other Agnes dish since opening night. “The evolution of this dish has ultimately been how to showcase the potato the best,” he says. “It has gone from gnocchi to agnolotti to ravioli and to its current form, a dumpling. I believe things can always be changing, as long as they are improving. We believe its current form is its strongest and final representation.”
Dumplings are often associated with dough-wrapped packets like Chinese xiao long bao and Japanese gyoza, but they can also be plump filling-free foods like Southern-style chicken and dumplings or dumplings like these at Agnes.
In geometry, every square is a rectangle, but not every rectangle is a square. Kalb differentiates Agnes’s dumplings by saying, “All gnocchi are dumplings, but not all dumplings are gnocchi… The main difference between our dumplings and most gnocchi is that ours are all hand-mixed, rolled, and shaped. We don’t use a paddle to create the ridges you typically find or an extruder that mixes and forms the pasta through a dye.” Irregular dumpling shapes lend a homey touch.
“Pasta is a love language,” Kalb says. “It has always been so interesting to me how incredibly rustic something can be while containing so much nuance and finesse in its construction.” A loaded baked potato has rarely been so elegant.