Allison Arevalo is 3rd generation Italian-American. She grew up in New York cooking with her grandmother and great grandmother, eating with her whole family. She worked in restaurants throughout high school and college. After years in marketing, she decided to pursue the dream of owning her own eatery. The troubled economy of New York City in the late aughts led her and her husband, Alejandro, to Oakland where she opened Homeroom, a Mac + Cheese restaurant, followed by a second location and a cookbook inspired by the menu. But Allison’s overriding philosophy about food and family brought her back to New York in 2018 to open Pasta Louise (her middle name and the forename of her respective grandmothers).
The lure of family was primarily inspired by a cancer diagnosis in Allison’s older sister, Lenore*. There was also a desire to get back to the roots of Allison’s cooking.
Allison Arevalo
“Homeroom started to feel very corporate. We had two locations and 90 employees. I was in meetings all day, which is not the path I wanted, and I needed a change,” Allison explained. “I wanted a restaurant based more on my own style of cooking: lots of pasta with simple sauces. I wanted a small restaurant that felt like a community, something to bring people together.”
Allison began bringing people together before leaving Oakland. With the restaurants sold and her family’s situation complicating, Allison felt down, so she started cooking pasta for friends on Friday evenings. A regular crowd of around 100 soon gathered in their home each week for ‘Pasta Friday.’
“It was really the time when I was the happiest; when I had all of my friends and family around. I’d provide pasta, salad, and popsicles; they’d bring the wine. We would drink and eat all night, and it was so much fun. So I decided to turn it into a cookbook.”
The Pasta Friday Cookbook: Let’s Eat Together celebrates and encourages the tradition started in Allison’s Oakland home but was born in the New York kitchens of her youth. And the spirit of conviviality accompanied her, Alejandro, and their two boys to a Brooklyn home and a corner storefront which promised deliverance of a dream.
“I wanted to start a community here,” Allison explained the original ethos. “I wanted it to be this really comfortable place where you can come eat a casual meal that is really good, have some beer or wine, and not think of the craziness of life.”
Pasta Louise
But the craziness of life came calling in COVID-19 months before the opening of Pasta Louise. The renovations stopped, but Allison persisted. She began making pasta and selling packages from their stoop near the restaurant. This offered an entree into the neighborhood and had locals eager for the opening of Pasta Louise in July, which differed from the owner’s original intentions with regard to function but not philosophy.
Instead of the community seating, inside and out, the restaurant became a retail entity featuring takeout pasta kits (house-made pasta/sauce/bread; a bottle of wine) in six varieties (or custom-built). “We’re essentially inspiring our customers to take the Pasta Louise experience home with them,” Allison said.
The storefront and outside seating area have been busy from 8 to 6, Tuesday - Sunday.
“We have families who come here for three meals a day, and they say ‘You must think we’re nuts,’ and I’m like ‘No! This is great. It’s exactly what I want!’”
*The Pasta Rose Scholarship started by Allison is for Brooklyn kids who have lost a parent to cancer. The scholarship is named after her sister’s daughters, both with the middle name of Rose. Click the link for more information.