With initials that stand for “Drop Pasta Not Bombs,” this Italian-style market is the brainchild of a chef who earned his chops in various Michelin-starred and award-winning kitchens throughout New York State and beyond. Opened in early 2019, when high school sweethearts Tony Scotto and wife/partner Louiedell moved back to their hometown of Nyack, a quaint suburb 20 miles north of Manhattan, DPNB Pasta & Provisions was supposed to be less about dropping pasta (kitchen slang for “starting an order”) than selling it over the counter—along with a house-made Bolognese, a bottle of Lurisia La Nostra Aranciata, and maybe some prosciutto from Vipore’s Cesare Cassella.
But Scotto couldn’t keep himself from dropping pasta for long. “We set out to be a pasta shop, not a restaurant, and we’ve failed miserably,” he says, adding that the food menu first “started with a chalkboard, then got bigger.” Their failure is Nyack’s gain: Now, visitors can stop in to enjoy seasonally driven fare, like a plate of tripoline, and a glass of wine at one of DPNB’s 14 seats, then pick up a bottle of Primo D.O.P. extra virgin olive oil from Sicily for their own kitchen counter. Even if the Scottos’ plan has skewed somewhat, it’s working perfectly: They’re fostering community in the place where they grew up, educating curious customers about Italy’s pastas, sauces, meats and other products, and enjoying curating items “produced in the Italian style, but made by Italian Americans,” as Scotto puts it—such as bell pepper jam from Anna Maria’s Foods, whose founder has roots in Piedmont.
Scotto has even come to terms with serving his freshly prepared pasta dishes to go, modeling the take-out side of the business after Bologna’s Pasta Fresca Naldi, which he first encountered while helping Joe Bastianich open Ricci in Milan. In short, DPNB is turning out to be the couple’s dream come true, not because it’s earning New York-level hype, but because it’s doing what the Scottos want it to do: “Intentionally not trying to capture business from the hipster foodies from Queens and Brooklyn,” the former Brooklynite notes with a laugh. “We want to do that hometown pasta business, that mom-and-pop thing.”