Gluten-free diners, rejoice: Settantatré produces one of the best pastas around

It’s never welcome news when someone learns they must stop eating gluten for health reasons. But that fate may seem especially cruel for a person married to an Italian chef whose career revolves around pasta.

Unless, of course, that chef is Matt Gentile. The chef at Old City’s Panorama since 2015, Gentile became determined to create a fresh pasta without wheat flour when his wife, Genna Curcio, was diagnosed with celiac disease eight years ago. After extensive experimentation, reformulations, adjustments, and refinement, he now produces a gluten-free dough that is the best I’ve tasted for a fresh pasta — supple enough to be rolled in fine, pliant sheets and then hand-shaped into plump tortelloni dumplings filled with creamy centers of burrata cheese.

“Tortellini have always been my favorite, but I couldn’t eat them for the longest time,” says Curcio, 42. “So this has definitely been exciting for me.”

Now all gluten-free eaters in the Philadelphia region can get excited, too, because the couple just opened Settantatré, a retail pasta company and production space in Milmont Park, Delaware County, where Gentile is producing several fresh gluten-free pasta shapes, including tagliatelle and wider pappardelle. He also makes a range of excellent sauces (veal Bolognese, lamb ragù, and Sunday Sauce with gluten-free meatballs), as well as several gluten-full pastas that are produced on separate machinery on separate days.

If you’ve spent any time exploring gluten-free pasta (as my family has since our daughter was diagnosed as celiac last spring), you’ll recognize how significant this development is. Gluten is the key that allows common wheat flour doughs to develop structure, elasticity, and snap. And while we’ve found several acceptable imported dried pastas (Garofalo, La Fabbrica della Pasta, Bionaturae, and Le Veneziane are our favorites so far), most of the fresh pastas I’ve encountered have been horrible, ranging from gummy to puffy, mealy, and flat-out gross.

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Gentile’s pasta comes closer than any other I’ve tried to landing a true pasta snap, just a micron short of perfect replication. And it is the product of extensive trial and error.

“I went to the supermarket and literally spent $300 on all the different gluten-free flours I could find, and laid them out onto a table” he said, acknowledging that early experiments were disappointing. “I could never get (the dough) thin enough, because it would be too thick or crack or have no texture.”

His current dough is a blend of six flours and eggs, plus xanthan and guar gums, which help bind the dough and retain moisture. Each of the flours — sorghum, tapioca, potato, millet, brown rice, and corn — plays a different role in achieving the right texture. Some of them Gentile first grinds to a fine powder.

“It wasn’t just finding the right mix, but figuring out how to mix them and how long to mix them,” he said, reluctant to reveal too many details about his process.

Their little storefront on MacDade Boulevard is just the first step in their budding business. Though the gluten-free and gluten-full pastas are made on separate machinery in different parts of the space on different days, with 24 hours of inactivity between production to minimize the risk of gluten particles floating in the air, the slight potential for cross-contamination remains. Our gluten-free daughter had no signs of discomfort following our Settantatré feast of multiple pasta courses. But everyone has a different sensitivity to gluten exposure, so extra-cautious customers may hesitate to try it until Settantatré is able to grow the business and expand its work space..

“I don’t blame them,” says Gentile. “My next step is to have separate facilities.”

Based on my tasting, I expect interest in these pastas to grow fast. Aside from selling them at their Milmont Park storefront, they’ve already placed them for sale at 320 Market Café in Swarthmore, where Curcio also works in accounting and human resources. And for now, neither of the couple are quitting their day jobs. Regulars at Panorama — where Gentile refined much of his research — have tasted many versions of his gluten-free pasta, including those tortelloni that he serves with a light but flavorful tomato brodo, including some of the 180 diners he served at the Old City restaurant one night on the same Saturday he was also up for 48 hours straight, preparing the pastas and sauces for Settantatré's grand opening.

“I was a little delusional by the time Saturday night was over,” said Gentile. “I’m definitively busy. But we’re happily busy, and we’re doing it.”

Settantatré Pasta Company, 605 W. MacDade Blvd., Milmont Park (Folsom); 610-314-0876; on Facebook. Pastas also available at 320 Market Cafe’s Swarthmore location (713 S. Chester Rd., 610-328-7211).