“I always wanted Forma to feel as if you can’t find anything like it in the grocery store.”
Becca Romagnoli, the owner of Forma Pasta, leans on the counter of her Allentown shop as she says this, pointing at the glass-protected case beside her. It’s filled with exactly what she says: pasta you can’t find in the grocery store — rye and carraway soprisine, porcini fettuccine, red pepper pesto gnocchi.
The neighborhood store is small, only big enough to fit a few customers at a time. Behind the counter, three employees wrap dried Aglio e Olio linguine into neatly-stacked bundles, readying them to be frozen, packaged, and shipped out to Harvie members.
Forma Pasta has been in this retail space since mid-2020, when Becca, a decades-long restaurant and pasta-making veteran, left her position at The Vandal in Lawrenceville. Pre-pandemic, she had started a subscription pasta service — Forma Pasta — out of their basement. So, deciding she was “done with the cooking side” of the food industry, she packed up Forma and found a home in Allentown. Slowly, crafting her inventive, experimental, wild-flavored noodles, she grew the business, branching out to wholesale and new products.
Seasonality drives her flavors. In winter, you’ll find heartier offerings, like smoked paprika or pimento and activated charcoal cappelletti. In summer, lighter ingredients — ramp pesto, tomato, corn — take the lead. (The super-seasonal ingredients, like ramps, Becca gets from a farmer working with Amish farms in Lancaster County.)
Shapes, on the other hand, are driven by curiosity. Often, Becca finds something new in a cookbook or on Instagram, then teaches herself to make it. This lends itself to some unique noodles, like funghetti, a soup pasta, and sacchettoni, the “beggars purse.”
“Even though it seems that people tend to gravitate towards the normal stuff… I’m intrigued by different flavors and things you don’t find anywhere,” she said.
Anything experimental that does well in the subscriptions — like the perogies found on Harvie, for example — has the chance to make it into the case full time.
Pasta has been a part of Becca’s life since childhood — she has “vivid” memories of her grandparents making fresh pasta — and she doesn’t plan to leave it behind any time soon. As Forma grows, she hopes to add more subscriptions and elements to the business while keeping things “as simple as possible.”
But in the meantime, Becca says she’s content with her production for retail, subscriptions, and wholesale. Harvie is their biggest wholesale account, and she says “it’s been wonderful” to work with the Harvie community.
Find Forma Pasta perogies, ravioli, and other fresh pasta on Harvie. Sauté the ‘rogies up with some apples and onions or try out her linguine in this recipe!
