It Happens Here: Family-Run Somerville Shop Sells 115 Different Types Of Pasta
SOMERVILLE (CBS) - A factory in Somerville is making more than 100 kinds of pasta, with traditions dating back generations.
Deano Matarazzo of Deano's Pasta has a family history of linguini.
"It was really a tight, tight family unit and always revolving around the center of our universe was pasta," he told WBZ-TV. "Literally we all started when we were 7, 8 years old."
Dean's grandfather started making long hair pasta at his original location in Medford in 1947.
Since those early days, the factory moved to Charlestown before finding its home in Somerville where it's been for the past two decades. The Somerville location is where Dean saw the pasta requests start to boil over.
"The world has changed a lot, so everybody has a niche and everybody wants to be different so now we have, I don't know, last time I counted 115 different pastas," Matarazzo said.
Dean makes and tries each new recipe himself. The taste testing is clearly the most grueling part.
"At night when I go home, yeah I'll have pasta every night," he said.
Even with 115 choices at his fingertips, Dean always comes back for the original.
"Sometimes if I find myself here on a Sunday morning and no one is around, sure I love to get some flour and make some," he told us.
Pasta has become a family affair for the Matarazzos. That family extends well beyond having the same last name.
Somerville artists have covered the exterior of the shop with images of the machine workers, the store front clerks, and even someone who was walking his dog.
"All of our neighbors were invited to come out and they were traced on the building," Dean's wife Hala Matarazzo told WBZ-TV.
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