Want pasta made from organic produce and ingredients? It's at a new shop in Sturgeon Bay
STURGEON BAY - It started with making some of the more unique products to be found at a farmers market.
Now, that product − fresh, healthy pastas made from organic, sustainably farmed, locally sourced ingredients − can be found in a store, at Clario Farmstead Pasta in downtown Sturgeon Bay.
The store has been open for a couple of weeks but is holding a grand opening celebration April 1. The event will feature samples of Clario's pastas, samples of Door County-made breads and sweets, wine tastings and other products, "like a pop-up market," co-owner Claire Thompson said.
Thompson and her husband and business co-owner, Mario Micheli, make small batches of a variety of pasta styles and flavors themselves from vegetables mostly grown in their garden, local eggs and ancient grains. Their new shop carries those pastas, of course, that are flash-frozen when fresh, along with sauces, pesto, specialty cheeses, organic and sustainably produced wines from around the world, and more.
Their desire is to give customers the chance to make their own delicious, nutritious, healthy meals at home, and to do so with relative ease. After all, for pasta, it's basically boiling some water, throwing in the pasta and cooking for a couple minutes, then draining and adding sauce, cheese, meat, veggies, whatever.
"We want to provide restaurant-quality food that people can make at home," Thompson said.
The ingredients result in pastas that Thompson described as "not unhealthy." Besides using durum wheat (a traditional high-fiber pasta grain), she and Micheli also use Einkorn, an ancient grain that's higher in fiber and protein and lower in carbohydrates than common wheat, and a lot of eggs. They mix in whole vegetables for extra fiber and health benefits, not just the juice for coloring and maybe a little added taste. Thompson said almost a full serving of vegetable is in every serving of pasta.
Using the whole vegetable also adds to the flavor of the pastas, and Thompson said they can be enjoyed without going heavy on the sauce. Among the flavors Clario Farmstead has made are roasted butternut squash, carrot and beet, carrot and turmeric and spinach, along with herb-driven and unique flavors like lemon pepper and squid ink.
"We're creating pasta that has its own flavor profile," Thompson said. "You can just serve it with olive oil if you want."
Thompson and Micheli said they're very selective about sourcing the highest quality ingredients available to mix with their vegetables for their pastas, and the organic and sustainable part is extremely important to their business ethos, as well as using local sources as much as possible.
Their pastas use not only the vegetables they grow in their Sturgeon Bay garden but also free-range eggs from Backyard Acres in Sturgeon Bay and other ingredients from Pat's Patch in Baileys Harbor, Emerald Acres in Sturgeon Bay and Cold Climate Farms in southern Door County, all organic or sustainable.
"There's a huge network of organic farms out there," Thompson said. "We don't need to do it all anymore."
Produce leads to pasta
The genesis for the shop goes back to 2005, when Thompson and Micheli began renting space in community gardens in Milwaukee area, where they lived, and they got hooked on organic gardening.
They began selling their Clario Farms produce at farmers markets in the Milwaukee area. Meanwhile, Thompson had been coming up to Door County frequently to visit friends, and the idea of moving started taking hold.
"We started to put the pieces together and figure out how we could do something with our gardening obsession and move to Door County," Micheli said.
The next step was buying the farm in Algoma, where they raised beef cattle and chickens in addition to growing produce and sold their wares at farmers markets in Door County as well as the Milwaukee area.
But a tough growing year in 2014 led to the couple looking for ways to diversify the products they made for the farmers markets. That's where pasta making came into play. It's certainly a unique item to find at a farmers market, but it proved to be very popular.
"We had a bad growing year, but we'd also been playing around with pasta because the eggs had been so good from the farm," Micheli said.
"It's important to diversify if you're doing vegetables," Thompson said. "We'd been doing jams, jellies, but pasta just really took off. … The main thing why pasta took off is it's just such an accessible food and it's easy to prepare."
"Everyone knows how to cook pasta," Micheli said. "Once people latched onto it, it just kept coming back."
'Our customers wanted' a brick-and-mortar shop
Thompson and Miceli sold the farm and moved to Sturgeon Bay three years ago, but they continued growing produce organically, making pastas and selling their products at farmers markets around Door County and Milwaukee. The pastas have remained popular with their customers, and their requests, especially from Milwaukeeans who visit Door County, led to the new brick-and-mortar shop that's now open.
"Our customers wanted it," Thompson said. "It was the No. 1 question at every farmers market − Where's your shop? We would hear it literally dozens of times at every farmers market. … It feels like we're finally incubating from our temporary shelter into a more permanent home."
"When we moved, we basically said we're going to a store at some point," Micheli said.
Customer feedback also led Thompson and Micheli to work on pasta meal kits that they'll introduce by summer. The kits, which will be able to feed two, four or six people, will include pasta, choice of marinara or pesto, optional add-ins, side salad with higher-quality produce, a mini ciabatta from Cultured bakery in Sister Bay and baked desserts from Galecktables in Sister Bay.
They said the kits will be good for local residents to make a quick, healthy meal but especially will allow vacationers and weekend visitors to Door County the chance to do the same without having to bring food with them and store it.
"We heard a lot of feedback," Micheli said. "A lot of people coming up for a weekend (are) staying in a condo, on a boat."
Now that they have an actual shop, Clario Farmstead may further expand its product lines. Micheli said it might give them the chance to branch out and make not just more types of pastas but also ingredients that go with them, as well as appetizers, tapenades and hummuses. They're also looking to make ravioli in the near future.
Eventually, Thompson and Micheli hope to have their own kitchen space; they've been making their pastas and other products in the shared-use commercial kitchen at the Northeast Wisconsin Technical College campus in Sturgeon Bay. They don't expect to open a restaurant, saying enough fine dining and pasta places already exist in Door County. They haven't started selling online, although that's possible down the road if they find a way to maintain the quality of their frozen pastas during shipping.
No matter what comes in the future, that quality of taste and healthiness remains paramount to Thompson and Micheli as they head into their first year with their shop.
"We want to show people we can provide their family some great meal options in a really healthy way," Micheli said.
Contact Christopher Clough at 920-562-8900 or cclough@doorcountyadvocate.com.
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FYI
Clario Farmstead Pasta will hold a grand opening from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. April 1 for its new shop, 19 N. Third Ave., Sturgeon Bay. Regular business hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays, although hours could expand for the summer. For more information, visit clariofarms.com or facebook.com/clariofarmsllc or email clario@clariofarms.com.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Pasta made from organic ingredients? It's at a new Sturgeon Bay shop
