The customer is always right… except when they’re wrong.
Garlic Soda, a website with the motto “weird name, great stories,” recently published a list of peculiar orders received by restaurant employees. The rundown included an ice-cream sundae smothered with ketchup, a bowl of blue-cheese dressing sans wings or salad, and 13 french fries, no more no less.
That takes us to Sergio’s Pasta, a weeks-old enterprise that invites diners to build their own meal for takeout or delivery by going online and selecting from among four varieties of fresh pasta, six in-house sauces, four proteins, eight vegetables and nine add-ons, such as chili oil and oregano. Founder Serge Gregoire, who operates out of a commercial kitchen in southwest Winnipeg, reports that he hasn’t been tasked with preparing anything too outlandish yet, though there was one request he fielded a few days into the new year that gave him pause.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
A trip to Venice, Italy, is what started Serge Gregoire, owner of Sergio’s Pasta, on his food-creation journey.
“Probably the wildest one so far was our Cheese Pull dish (four-cheese sauce topped with toasted breadcrumbs) with added pesto and tomato-basil sauce, sautéed mushrooms, Italian sausage, feta cheese and olives,” Gregoire says, seated in a Corydon Avenue coffee shop, 10 minutes from his home in Riverview.
“Honestly, it sounded pretty interesting — and smelled great, too — but it was the olives that ruined it for me, personally. I’m just not a fan. For the most part most, though, orders have been pretty normal, just adding some extra protein or cheese.”
Gregoire, 28, grew up in rural Manitoba, splitting time between his divorced mother’s home in the French-speaking community of Aubigny and his father’s fourth-generation grain farm near St. Jean Baptiste. He was a Grade 12 student at L’École/Collège Régionale Gabrielle-Roy in Îles des Chênes when he was hired as a line cook at Moxies’ since-closed St. Vital Centre location. That job led to a similar position the following year, albeit in a more scenic setting than a suburban shopping mall.
“I moved to Whistler right after high school, where I did pretty basic stuff like burgers and chicken fingers at the Roundhouse Lodge, the restaurant at the top of Whistler Mountain,” says Gregoire, who spent his second year in the B.C. alpine resort toiling in the kitchen of the five-star Fairmont Chateau Whistler.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
A high-end extruder from Europe produces fresh campanelle pasta.
Gregoire, the second youngest of six siblings, returned home in 2020 to assist his father and an older brother on the farm. He headed west again 18 months later, this time to work at a liquefied natural-gas plant in northern B.C. The pay was rewarding but the schedule — two weeks on followed by one week off, coupled with a lengthy commute from where he was living — left a lot to be desired.
“It reached the point where I started to question what I was doing. Why stay there working for somebody else, I asked myself, when I could be back here with my family, building toward something more meaningful?”
Not only did Gregoire fully commit to farming in 2023, he spent a good chunk of last winter in Australia, lending a hand on a 15,000-acre farm outside of Perth. The experience proved invaluable, he says, joking that probably the biggest difference between harvesting wheat Down Under versus the Prairies was watching kangaroos bound past his combine.
Gregoire took a roundabout route on his way back, stopping first in Karachi, Pakistan, to attend a pal’s wedding, before joining his girlfriend Kenzie in Paris. After a few days in the City of Lights, the couple travelled to Venice, Italy, which is where today’s story truly begins.
On their third day there, they were hunting for somewhere to stop for lunch after spending the morning visiting museums. They noticed a line stretching outside the door of a place called We Love Italy Fresh Pasta and, surmising that was probably a positive sign, joined the queue.
Upon entering, they discovered it was a takeout joint where customers could customize their meal by picking from an array of displayed noodles, sauces and proteins, in much the same manner as one orders a sandwich from Subway. They enjoyed the fare so much that they returned hours later to fetch dinner.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
Customers can create their own meals by selecting from fresh varieties of pasta, in-house sauces, proteins, vegetables and other add-ons.
As they were lounging on the patio of their rental unit that night, polishing off the last of their selections, Gregoire openly wondered why there wasn’t something similar in Winnipeg — a fast-food spot with pasta as the star attraction. He proceeded to stay up late, brainstorming and typing notes into his phone. By the end of their stay, he’d convinced himself to “go for it,” figuring if he waited too long, another party would surely beat him to the punch.
Gregoire spent most of last spring developing sauce recipes with the help of his father’s partner Shelley Patel, a Red Seal chef who teaches a culinary course at Winkler’s Northlands Parkway Collegiate. After settling on four main ones, including garlic-Alfredo and Bolognese, they turned their attention to pasta. Thanks to a high-end pasta extruder he imported from Europe, they were soon turning out expertly-made orecchiette, maccheronni-rigate, campanelle and penne noodles. He laughs, calling that a far cry from the leftover Chef Boyardee his mother used to pack for his grade-school lunches.
Gregoire’s plan was to open in late September, when activity on the farm would be winding down. Problem was, he couldn’t find a suitable locale that didn’t require months of renovations, time he simply didn’t have because of his farm duties. At his realtor’s suggestion, in November he paid a visit to Winnipeg Ghost Kitchens on Lowson Crescent, a newish venture that rents out fully-licensed commercial-kitchen space on an hourly or monthly basis. The facility, a stone’s throw from Fort Garry Brewing on Kenaston Boulevard, turned out to be just what the doctor ordered.
MIKAELA MACKENZIE / FREE PRESS
Sergio’s Pasta currently accepts orders Wednesday to Sunday, with Tuesdays reserved for prepping
“I’m in a shared kitchen but the other tenant and I are never there at the same time,” says Gregoire, whose official launch date was Dec. 4, a date he’ll remember owing to the fact he and his four-person staff, which for now includes his father Roland on dish duty, ran out of pasta two hours in — that’s how busy they were.
Sergio’s Pasta currently accepts orders Wednesday to Sunday, with Tuesdays reserved for prepping. (For a full list of hours and menu selections, go to sergiospasta.com.) In addition to two sizes of pasta servings, both of which arrive in biodegradable containers, Gregoire also offers Caesar salad, garlic bread made fresh by Friend Bakery and Pizza on Osborne Street, and, for dessert, tiramisu.
He admits there will probably be long days ahead once the snow melts and seeding on the farm commences, only he’s never been one to shy away from hard work, he says. Plus, he has full confidence in his chum, co-chef and oft-Instagram foil Enzo Laterza.
“From time to time I may be forced to adopt a more managerial role but my intention is still to be here as much as possible,” he continues, noting he’s still keeping his eyes open for a standalone spot, preferably in his home neighbourhood of South Osborne, where he can ultimately market Sergio’s-branded sauces and fresh pasta, as well as accept catering assignments, another of his aims.
“It’s interesting because my parents were always encouraging me to think of a business I could do to keep myself occupied during the winter months, when I have time off,” he says, lamenting the fact he has had to put another of his interests, refinishing mid-century wood furniture, on the backburner.
“I’m not sure a restaurant is exactly what they had in mind, but because they’ve been so supportive, it’s given me the courage to know it’s all going to work out. I don’t have any doubts.”
winnipegfreepress.com/davidsanderson
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Dining and Cooking