Today we’d like to introduce you to Josh Buckwald.
Josh, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Since as early as I can remember, pasta has been my comfort food. My grandma made the most incredible noodles with butter sauce that no one else could replicate throughout my entire childhood. (It turns out she was just salting her pasta water properly… but I wouldn’t learn that for another 25 years.)
I didn’t always know that I wanted to be a chef. I spent a year working on Broadway for Wicked right out of college, then moved west to Hollywood and spent some time getting coffee and dry cleaning for the stars as an assistant to a “power-manager”. But throughout that entire time pasta was still my lifeblood. When I finally woke up and realized I wanted to be a chef, there was no doubt in my mind that my first restaurant would focus primarily on pasta.
After spending years learning from some of LA’s best chefs (most recently from Steve Samson as a sous chef at Rossoblu) that time had finally come with Orso.
Orso intended to be an upscale neighborhood restaurant focusing primarily on hand-rolled pasta and exciting regional wines. The aim was to pair classical Italian techniques with local ingredients and the cultural traditions that reflect everything there is to love about Los Angeles. Then, when we were weeks away from signing a lease, the world turned into a garbage fire and turned our industry entirely on its head.
With the pandemic changing the dining landscape for the foreseeable future, we had to turn our model upside down in order to fulfill our larger mission of providing a sense of comfort and occasion to our community when they needed both things more than ever. So instead of going dormant, I decided to start making pasta out of my house. Having my recipes, my materello (giant rolling pin) and a giant box of masks and gloves – I had everything I needed to launch Orso out of my kitchen.
We started selling just to family and friends and slowly grew to where we are today. We currently operate out of a commercial kitchen in the Arts District with a couple of phenomenal employees (Roni included) and a lot of ground still left to cover.
Has it been a smooth road?
It has not…
The first few weeks, we got crushed with orders and I was up until 5AM three nights in a row. At night I would cook all of the orders required for the next day, then sleep for a few hours, get up and deliver all of the orders that afternoon, then come home and repeat the whole process. My fiancee would serve as customer service/dispatch and would make FedEx run to print thank you cards.
Eventually, I caved and brought on Roni to help me fill orders – at which point she fully became part of the family. She would show up first thing in the morning and work with me until night. She brought over some dutch ovens and combined with mine, we would cook 30 pounds of bolognese a week.
When we saw the tilt skillet (giant pan that’s capable of cooking 35 gallons of sauce at once) we almost cried.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Orso delivers fresh pasta and homemade sauces throughout Los Angeles.
All of our pastas and sauces are made using produce from farms surrounding Los Angeles whenever possible. We have gluten-free and vegan options of both pastas and sauces, and all of our pasta is made al materello (with love and a giant rolling pin) as opposed to by machines.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Totally. Los Angeles is one of the most underrated food cities in the world and is THE single most underrated pasta city. We’ve been written off as the land of summer bods but people are obsessed with pasta here. In fact, Los Angeles has the most professional sfolignos (chefs that roll their pasta out by hand with a rolling pin) out of any city in the world besides Bologna, Italy.
I’ve actually had full-on “underground pasta” nights, where me and some other sfolignos bounce all day from each other’s houses and pop-ups cooking for each other and showing each other different techniques and traditions. Los Angeles is unique in this sense.
Pricing:
- You can get a chef driven dinner for two made with pristine ingredients for under $30
Contact Info:
- Address: 672 S. Santa Fe Ave.
Los Angeles, CA, 90021 - Website: orsopasta.com
- Phone: 3107101918
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/orsopasta/
- Facebook: facebook.com/orsopasta
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/OrsoPasta
- Other: https://www.google.com/search?q=google+orso+los+angeles&rlz=1C5CHFA_enUS897US897&oq=google+orso+los+angeles&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64j69i60l3.9146j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#lrd=0x80c2c7037a38a08f:0x979825282f5b1409,1,,,
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