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The long-running pasta show of queens

As he stacks four, 1-pound packs of bucatini on Cassinelli’s compact counter, Giovanni Cali all but apologizes for his pasta purchase.

It’s as difficult to find a store that sells bucatini, which looks like spaghetti with a hole in the center, as it is to make it. And this is why Cali has been a Cassinelli customer for nearly 50 years.

He is also a fan of the freshness. Each week, Cassinelli makes 3,000 to 4,000 pounds of pasta on-site, right in the shop for all to see.

Cali, who was born in Palermo, the capital of Sicily, recalled that he first stopped in Cassinelli in 1972, when the current owners, Tony Bonfigli and Nella Costella, took over the shop in Astoria, a neighborhood in Queens, New York.

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Bonfigli, who came to the United States from Tuscany as a teenager in 1956 and started working at Cassinelli the next year, pointed out that at that time, Cassinelli, which was established more than a century ago, was actually across the street. That’s where it first set up shop in Astoria in the 1930s, after moving out of locations in Manhattan and New Jersey.

The current shop, which is sandwiched between an accountant and a financial adviser on 23rd Avenue near the Ditmars Boulevard subway stop, is such a well-kept secret that even many locals don’t know of it.

That’s mainly because of its limited hours: It operates 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. It is also shuttered behind metal gates every day from noon to 12:30 p.m. so the nine-person crew can eat lunch together. Up until recently, Costella, who is 83 and uses a cane, cooked pasta for everyone. These days, they order fast food, usually pizza or burgers.

Aside from a dark green awning the color of the stripe in the Italian flag and a small sign in the front window, it doesn’t advertise itself.

Cassinelli sells three dozen types of pasta. The standards — cheese ravioli, egg fettuccine and rigatoni — are rounded out by rarities like gemelli, which is colloquially called unicorn horns, squid-ink linguine and custom-order fusi sheets.

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The ravioli, 50 to a carton, are only $8; the 1-pound bags of cappelletti, cappelloni and cavatelli are $5; and noodles are $3.50 per pound.

The pasta-making show is free. So is the clowning around.

When Benito Calanni rode up on his old Peugeot bicycle, he waved. Bonfigli was ready for him.

Calanni, who is 80 and from Sicily, is another member of the Cassinelli half-century club.

On this trip, he bought a slab of Parmigiano-Reggiano — “the best in Astoria, New York and even America.”

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Bonfigli tried to backpedal his over-the-top comment, and there was a lot of animated banter about it in Italian.

“Benito doesn’t come for the great pasta,” he said, switching to English.

Calanni, happily taking the bait, concurred. “I come for the insults.”

As he rode off, satisfied with his insults and cheese, another regular Cassinelli commuter took his place.

Tina Pagano, who declared that she is not merely 79 but 79 1/2, makes regular trips from her home in the Jackson Heights neighborhood of New York.

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“This is the only kind of pasta my grandchildren will eat,” she said, adding that she’s been a customer since about 1968.

Her 18-year-old granddaughter, Valentina Ciminera, who was carrying out a big bag of ravioli and tortellini for her, enthusiastically confirmed the veracity of this statement.

As it neared closing time, Gisel Riccoboni, Costella’s daughter, prepared 5-pound bags of pasta for wholesale clients. (Several restaurants in Manhattan and Long Island rely on Cassinelli for their pasta.)

Cali’s order was rung up, and he and Bonfigli started swapping spaghetti stories. Again, the conversation was in Italian, and it quickly turned to recipes.

Whose bucatini is the best?

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Bonfigli pointed to Cali, who is not shy about his pasta-making prowess: “His is better, but mine is easier.”

Cali returned the compliment: “Cassinelli is.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

NANCY A. RUHLING © 2018 The New York Times

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