Cassetta Rossa Restaurant, Lake Chelan - Primo Pasta, Simple style.
/
This I know: there is more to a great restaurant than just great food. There’s something that ignites an emotional reaction over more than just what I eat, imprinting a feeling within so that I never forget the place. It is hard to define what it takes to move me in this way – maybe because it's never exactly the same thing. But whatever it is, it’s present at Casetta Rossa Restaurant in the charming town of Lake Chelan WA, sparking within me a verklempt flood of admiration coupled with a tinge of jealousy and desire.
I first visited Casetta Rossa just a couple of months after it opened. The corrugated steel walls and roof of the tiny red shack-like structure on the outskirts of town don't even resemble a restaurant. It’s existence as an eatery was revealed only by its small patio, leading down to a gravel garden area scattered with a few mismatched tables, some umbrellas and plants growing along the wall of the adjacent building. A cement counter with six hotplates, a sink and a lowboy filled with super fresh vegetables and herbs overlooks the gravel dining courtyard. It is as simple a commercial backyard trattoria as one can find.
Beside the cooking area a door leads into a sleek European market and pasta factory. It is here that the magic happens; with a small pasta making machine from Italy nestled by the window, a curvy counter that doubles as a bar and a glass case filled with glistening roma tomatoes, green peppers and pasta made that same day. Across the room is a soda cooler displaying in plastic bins and bags even more pasta: fusilli, thick and shining in its beige floury warmth; fat curls of radiatore with layers of its trademark wavy cooling fins like the radiator of a car; and alluring campanelle, like sexy florets with fluted edges to create the perfect cling for one of the house-made sauces. A small selection of Italian wine and beer is available, served up in little no-big-deal tumblers like back in the old country.
The guys behind Casetta Rossa are Nathan Gottlieb and Teague Block, two thirty-something friends working with their own separate businesses – Teague’s wholesale pasta company combined with European food market, Lago Pasta, and Nathan’s namesake pasta bar/trattoria serving up that pasta. Though Teague is the pasta maker and Nathan runs the restaurant, together they’ve formed a sort of front of the house/back of the house partnership. But really they’re treating it as an experiment to make sure that they can get along both as entrepreneurs and as best buds working together. Because at the end of the day, their friendship is as important as their work.
friends nd founderes, Teague Block & Nathan gottlieb
This pasta and food undertaking in Chelan is not their first rodeo – despite their effervescent youthfulness and relaxed vibes these guys know what they are doing. Before coming here Nathan co-founded Pasta Casalinga a fresh pasta shop at Seattle’s iconic Pike Place Market that’s still operating today by his co-founder, Michela Tartaglia. Though virtually shut down during Covid, they continued to do take-away packaging and managed to turn a profit – a champion feat in itself and indicative of the quality that people will still pay for even when it seems the world is ending. But one day Nathan was walking along a sidewalk in downtown Seattle when someone in front of him dropped a lighter. Always a gentleman, Nathan went to pick it up and rose to the guy brandishing a knife who robbed him on the spot. It was then that he knew it was time for something which he and Teague had been brewing up to come to fruition: escaping the urban chaos of Seattle to run a restaurant. So they left Seattle for Chelan, some four hours away, to chase something new and fun and cool. Miranda (Randy) Flowers followed Nathan from the Pike Place pasta shop to cook along side him and help make the new operation a success. “We basically just ran away,“ she smiled broadly. “To Heaven,” Nathan added. The three of them, along with another cook, Shane Elliott, opened Casetta Rossa on May 23, 2023. And they haven’t looked back since.
Inside on the wall hangs a chalkboard with the day’s menu – only three options, plus a salad and a side thrown in to compliment them. The menu changes every day depending on what ingredients they have found and what looks good. Take the day’s side dish: Nathan spotted a vendor selling shishito peppers out of a box. They glistened so green and plump that Nathan offered to buy all of the unsold peppers – at clearance price – after the market closed. That’s how these guys roll — change the menu to fit whatever beautiful ingredients happen to appear. The side dish chalked was those peppers served lightly blistered alongside milky fresh ricotta and currant-sized baby tomatoes. Beautifully simple and sensational.
But the pasta is the main event at this curious little trattoria. Each type is made fresh and delightfully springy, cooks in seconds and is perfectly designed to present whatever delicate sauce might be concocted that day. They have three standards by which they judge their pasta shapes: Sauceability (how well the sauce adheres), Forkability (how easy it gets onto the fork and stays there) and Toothsinkability (how satisfying it is to bite into). For me, that translated to firm but silky fusilli bathed in an arugula ginger pesto, tossed with delicate crumbles of locally made pork sausage and kissed with creme fraiche, harissa and pecorino cheese. The harmony of flavors and textures was as romantic as it was delicious. My partner in culinary crime opted for a quintessential San Marzano pomodoro with pecorino, jumped up with a milky burrata, a trickle of chili oil and served on that leafy campanelle pasta made just hours earlier. After the first bite we each wanted to blurt out “getthefuckouttahere!” But we restrained ourselves, at least for a couple of seconds anyway…
In addition to outstanding food, it’s the little things in an eatery which are hugely important in its revelation as a special place. At Casetta Rossa tables don’t match, umbrellas offer shade only where needed and table lamps like those from your parent’s living room – no two alike – are set on your table as it gets dark. Gorgeous grapevines and sunflowers grow along the walls in lieu of art and you grab your own utensils from old, forgotten flour sifters when your food is ready. It feels like no big deal — like maybe they didn’t even think about those last minute details when they first opened. But it is a big deal; a very big deal. Because it’s like a setup your grandparents might have arranged when you were a little kid visiting on a warm summer evening. Or like that little place down that narrow alley in Rome where that simple plate of pasta changed your life. At Casetta Rossa that’s what it feels like; and it’s no accident that it just feels right.
The first time I walked in there it felt organic and spontaneous; the second time it felt just as new and special. Nathan describes the restaurant as an “experience,“ extolling the simplicity of the whole operation. “It’s a small time setup with big ideas and damn good food.” He’s not kidding – these guys are doing whatever they think makes sense and can pivot however they want, whenever they want. And it’s not just a hot spot for summer dinners in little Lake Chelan. For the snowy winter months that hit this Eastern Washington mountain town they plan to create a warming tent or two for outdoor dining as well as take away pasta packages, in-home chef services and even pasta-making and cooking classes.
So what is it about Casetta Rossa that makes it special to me? Maybe it’s the passion shared by everyone there that is so manifest throughout; from the simple place itself, to the cool people running it and, of course, the outstanding food. The vibe is super-chill yet sleek and professional in a way that makes you really want to eat their food. And then come back for more. It’s this kind of relaxed and functionally-casual approach to dining that stirs my emotions, sparks a hint of sadness that I lack the innate ability to create it myself, and makes me wish that I lived next door and never had to leave.
Casetta Rossa Trattoria & Lago Pasta Market, 510 E. Woodin Ave, Chelan, WA
