Tam Valley-based chef Tony Adams, owner of Mill Valley Pasta Co., is ready to bring a kaleidoscope of possibilities to your kitchen with the opening of his new shop in downtown Mill Valley this weekend. You’ll find everything from toasted couscous pearl pasta and black truffle tomato sauce to smoked organic maple syrup and bacon pangrattato (crispy breadcrumbs).
Adams went from making fresh pasta for friends and neighbors at home during the 2020 lockdown to becoming a fixture at Bay Area farmers markets. He now produces more than 1,400 pounds of pasta a week in small batches at the factory he opened in San Rafael in 2022. The pasta is slowly air-dried on open racks for six to 21 days to improve texture, flavor and digestibility.
More than 90 bronze-cut, fresh-extruded, mostly vegan varieties come in unique shapes. Flavor enhancers such as saffron, porcini, squid ink, truffles and local vegetable and herb purées are sourced from the farmers’ markets where Adams works as a vendor.
Earlier this year, Adams began using locally grown, harvested and milled heirloom wheat varieties from Honoré Farm and Mill in Larkspur for its plain pastas and launched the Antica line, featuring the rare durum wheat Hourani.
The shop also offers a handful of rotating fresh pastas, a dozen or so sauces and house-made specialties such as Calabrian chili paste, pickled lemon puree and naturally fermented hot sauce. A wide selection of imported, hard-to-find foods includes bottarga (cured fish roe), cured tuna heart, colatura di alici (Italian fish sauce), fine Italian Venchi chocolate, canned seafood and Italianavera sughi and affini (sauces and the like) from Italy’s San Marzano region.
Locally, you’ll find fresh cuts from Canteen Meats (Petaluma), Alec’s Ice Cream (Petaluma), Full Belly Farm (Guinda), and dried fruit from Everything Under the Sun Farm (Winters). The assortment changes regularly, with new products being introduced weekly.
Earlier this year, Mill Valley Pasta Co.’s Porcini Radiatore pasta won a Good Food Award from the Good Food Foundation, and its popular duck egg noodles were a finalist. Both are available in the store, along with some foods from fellow winners Adams met at the Good Food Awards trade show in Oregon in April – coffee from Speckled Ax Wood Coffee Roasters of Maine (Adams’ hometown), Beanstory beans from Seattle, and Oakland-based Kuali, maker of artisanal Mexican salsa.
In addition, some non-food items are also available, such as bed linen, cookbooks, pasta-making utensils, themed stationery, cards and jewelry, as well as wrapping paper with Italian biscuits, cold cuts and cheese or pasta shapes.
Adams’ curation of a regularly changing selection of unique products drives and inspires his continued growth.
“Everyone has to cook, and as a chef, I have a desire to have ingredients that no one else has and to provide access to those less accessible,” says Adams.
He explains this using a box of crayons as an analogy to his background in the food and restaurant industry.
“In central Florida (where he owned and operated the award-winning and acclaimed Big Wheel Provisions and the Big Wheel Mobile Food Truck in Orlando), there was a 12-crayon pack of ingredients. In the farmlands of central Pennsylvania (where he was executive chef at a restaurant in Hershey), there were 20-packs, some of which I had never seen or heard of. … Blue raspberries are real … and in California, where there are eight kinds of broccoli at the farmers market, there are 69-packs with a sharpener,” says Adams.
The chef also recalls his educational background. From 2016 to 2020, he was director of the culinary school at Cavallo Point Lodge in Sausalito and, earlier in his career, was an instructor at Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Orlando for more than five years.
“The look on the face of someone who is excited about something from Italy that they have never seen before, or who is from there but hasn’t seen it since they were a child, is exciting,” he says.
The 65-square-meter delicatessen was most recently Brooklyn – a project by Chabad of Mill Valley and before that a Baskin-Robbins ice cream parlor for four decades.
Mill Valley Pasta Co.’s grand opening will be held Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at 29 Miller Ave. in Mill Valley and will include giveaways, discounts and more. Store hours after that will be Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
For more information about the factory store, the seven farmers market locations and other retail outlets, or to shop online, visit millvalleypasta.com.
Leanne Battelle is a freelance food writer and restaurant columnist. Email her at [email protected] for news and recommendations and follow her on Instagram @therealdealmarin for more local food and updates on the launch of The Real Deal Marin restaurant search guide.
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