August 12, 2003

New York Press

GABRIELLA GERSHENSON

Tony Bonfigli, co-owner of Cassinelli, a 45-year-old pasta shop in Astoria, is the picture of a friendly neighborhood Italian guy. In a short-sleeved undershirt and khaki pants, Bonfigli is all belly overhang, plus a white cap worn at a jaunty angle that frames dark brows and a sly smile.

"People who love me call me fat Tony," he tells me, in a velvety Italian accent. "It sounds too much like a mafia guy, but I’m not."

Though he’s a straight arrow, Bonfigli has earned more than his share of street cred. The job at Cassinelli’s is the only one that the 60-year-old has ever held–he started off sweeping floors here as a teen in 1960, to which he cheerily adds, "I’m still sweeping the floors!"

But he also makes 30 varieties of fresh pasta, ranging from sheets for lasagna to ricotta-stuffed manicotti to more whimsical varieties like radiatore, fashioned after radiators, and paglia e fieno, a green and white mixture that literally translates to "straw and hay"–almost every day. On this afternoon, three workers in the back dust boards with semolina, man a machine that cranks out crimped sheets of cheese ravioli, and pack the product 50 at a time into cardboard boxes.

Weaving among them is an older woman who scurries from station to station, cutting string, tying boxes, entering and exiting refrigerators and freezers, clutching a different object in her hands every few minutes. This is Nella Costella, Cassinelli’s other owner and Bonfigli’s business partner. Though she has her finger in everything, Costella–who cuts an old-world figure in an apron and a kerchief worn over her fine white hair–is a woman of few words, or perhaps few English ones.

"Puoi venire qua?" She shouts at Bonfigli before disappearing into the front again, where she lays out a large sheet of pasta and scrapes off excess semolina before cutting it into broad strips for a customer in the store who has requested lasagna.

In such aspects–the prodigious use of Italian among customers and employees, the many recipes that remain unaltered, and the name, which belonged to the original owner, who sold the business to Bonfigli and Costella in 1972–Cassinelli’s is the same place that it was years ago.

The main difference now, according to Bonfigli, is the clientele. Only since the 1970s has he observed that non-Italians were starting to buy fresh pasta. Today, he says, customers from Japanese tourists to immigrants from several countries in South America are as prevalent as the Italians.

"I had a friend who was a Hungarian Jew, and he ate the cheese ravioli with sour cream!" Bonfigli recalls, shaking his head. "I threatened to refuse to sell it to him once, and he said to me, ‘You have to try it! It’s so good!’"

Bonfigli, who admits he still hasn’t tried that particular combination, favors the spinach ravioli, an all-natural pasta of durum wheat, water and egg filled with a mixture of spinach and several cheeses. Tony smiles as he motions to his swollen stomach. "We are all pasta eaters here!"