Presto Pasta brings handmade, customizable bowls to Boston’s North End

Presto Pasta is about to add a new kind of speed to Boston’s North End: a handmade pasta-to-go window inside AquaPazza at 135 Richmond Street, built for people who want a real bowl of pasta without committing to a long sit-down meal. The concept is set to open Friday, May 15, and it arrives with a sharp pitch for a neighborhood that already lives and breathes Italian food.

The menu is built around more than five homemade pasta bases and more than 125 possible bowl combinations. Fresh spaghetti, rigatoni, gnocchi and fettuccine anchor the lineup, while sauces run from pesto to cacio e pepe. Add-ons include chicken cutlet, burrata, shrimp and black truffles, turning the window into something closer to a fast-moving pasta counter than a stripped-down takeout stop.

The draw is not just customization, but visibility. The pasta is handmade fresh in house every day, and guests will be able to watch chefs shaping it through the window. That production line is part of the experience, making the craft as central as the final bowl. Presto Pasta will operate daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., a schedule that fits the lunch crowd, the dinner rush and the steady stream of people moving through the waterfront edge of the neighborhood.

That setting matters. Boston describes the North End as one of the city’s most visited neighborhoods and a hub for the city’s Italian-American community. The Paul Revere House, built about 1680, sits in Boston’s oldest residential neighborhood and keeps the area tied to the Freedom Trail’s constant tourist traffic. With Langone Park and Lewis Wharf nearby, Presto Pasta is positioned for visitors, office workers and locals who want North End quality in a format they can carry out the door.

The project also reflects the reach of Frank DePasquale and DePasquale Ventures, whose North End and Boston-area footprint includes AquaPazza, Bricco, Umbria, Mare Oyster Bar, Quattro, Trattoria il Panino, Bricco Salumeria & Pasta Shop and Bricco Panetteria. Bricco Panetteria, the group’s bread bakery on Hanover Street, bakes fresh artisan bread daily and supplies the restaurants, a useful preview of the production-first mindset behind Presto Pasta.

That same network has been building toward a larger North End transformation at Cross Street and Salem Street, with a broader Italian-themed project targeted for June 2026. For now, though, the most immediate change is on Richmond Street: a pasta window that brings the neighborhood’s familiar appetite into a faster, more customizable form, without giving up the theater of seeing the pasta made right in front of you.