Lotsa Pasta Marks 44 Years With Sales, Samplings, and Albanian Olive Oil

At 3717 Lexington Road in Louisville's St. Matthews neighborhood, Lotsa Pasta turned 44 on March 24 with a storewide sale and an in-store sampling of Mira Mira's small-batch extra virgin olive oil from the Albanian Riviera. The event brought together longtime regulars and curious newcomers around a product that few Louisville shoppers had tasted before: cold-pressed, early-harvest oil sourced from ancient trees on the Albanian coast.

The backstory behind that olive oil adds real texture to the tasting. Bree Cameron and Adrian Michels, the importers behind Mira Mira, have spent the past five years splitting their time between Louisville and the Albanian Riviera. Their oil is cold pressed, low in acidity, and high in polyphenols, and they describe their operation as "one of the first to produce and bring TRUE small batch olive oil to the United States," including blends of rare and native Albanian olive variants. The March 24 sampling at Lotsa Pasta was exactly the kind of local partnership the store has built its reputation on.

The shop itself has a timeline worth knowing. John and Vicki Hale opened Lotsa Pasta on Bardstown Road in March 1982 with two employees and one mission: fresh homemade pasta for a city that, at the time, had never seen it. The most common reaction when the Hales announced their plans, by their own account, was simply "What is pasta?" Within a decade the customer base had outgrown the original storefront, and the shop relocated to its current Lexington Road address in the early 1990s, where it has operated as a full international specialty grocery ever since.

Then vs. now: in 1982, the store sold fresh pasta from a tiny counter. Today it carries its own Cavallo Nero artisan pasta, a bronze die-extruded, slow-dried product made and packaged in-house, alongside imported Italian cheeses, prosciutto, cured meats, olives, capers, tomatoes, and now Mira Mira's Albanian oil. The sourcing philosophy, provenance-first, staff-curated, small-batch wherever possible, has not shifted across four decades.

If the anniversary tasting gave you a reason to go back, here is how to make the most of a visit to the Lexington Road shop. Mira Mira's oil is worth picking up for home use; the best way to appreciate it is to drizzle it raw over fresh tagliatelle with a heavy hand of Parmigiano-Reggiano and nothing else. Stock up on Cavallo Nero pasta for the pantry and ask the counter staff about whatever prosciutto they are cutting that week. The staff are, by design, people who eat this food themselves, and a five-minute conversation will save you several bad purchases.

Lotsa Pasta is open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday noon to 5 p.m. The number is 502-896-6361.