Nothing beats fresh pasta. Dry spaghetti and its numerous variants are fine — indeed, some can be truly excellent — but it’s always an extra pleasure to sit down to a plate of soft, delicate linguine or pappardelle made in-house the same day.
That said, not all pasta fresca is equal. When the dough is mixed, rolled and then sliced or fashioned into individual pieces by hand — rather than simply passed through the blades of a cutting machine — it gains an extra level of lightness. Watch sfoglina Chisato Sugino in action, and you will see how it’s done.
Her shop, Pastificio Sugino, is a modest operation housed inside a converted tailor’s shop on a side street in residential Nishikoyama. But it’s just the right size to fit a small workspace by the front window; a deli counter with a gleaming La Cimbali espresso machine at the door; and a kitchen at the rear with a laid-back dining space big enough to seat seven or eight people at a time.