Onda Pasta & Provisions Store Opens Saturday in Kaimukī

Photo: Mari Taketa

Onda Pasta & Provisions, the first brick-and-mortar store for Honolulu’s longtime craft pasta maker, opens in Kaimukī this Saturday, March 16, with plenty of culinary star power behind it. Founded by Roman-born chef Andrea Onetti in 2011, Onda Pasta is now owned by restaurateurs Matt Resich (Brick Fire Tavern and Pizza Mamo) and Danny Ka‘aiali‘i (Encore Saloon, The Daley, Pizza Mamo). It’s the first foray into wholesale and retail for both.

Co-owners Matt Resich, left, and Danny Ka‘aiali‘i. Photo: Mari Taketa

On offer at the new shop are fresh pastas, including standard, basil and squid ink spaghettis, rigatoni and penne, all $8 for two portions. Gnocchi include Onetti’s cheesy version ($11) and a new Okinawan sweet potato one. House-made sauces are for sale, separately and in take-and-bake kits for two that combine fresh pasta, a sauce and garnish for $16 to $20. An example: bucatini (in the works) with pomodoro sauce or sausage and peppers, plus a garnish like fresh herbs or cheese, and simple instructions for boiling the pasta and heating the sauce. Eventually, Resich says, there will be take-and-bake kits of lasagna, baked rigatoni, maybe eggplant parmigiana; and more varieties of pasta and sauce.

Photo: Mari Taketa

For now, there’s also house-made ricotta and freshly pulled mozzarella cheeses, pesto and tiramisu made in-house, local beer, wine and small selections of olive oil, vinegar, tinned fish, jarred tomatoes and peppers. “Everything on the shelves has a home with these pastas,” says Resich, who likes to browse similar selections at R. Fields Wine Co. and T.J. Maxx. “It’s like a market, and the showpiece in the center is fresh pasta.”

Photo: Mari Taketa

SEE ALSO: Foodflash: Encore Saloon to Close After Almost 8 Years in Chinatown

Onda Pasta & Provisions’ opening comes four days after Ka‘aiali‘i announced the upcoming closure of Encore Saloon, the popular Chinatown restaurant and mezcaleria he co-founded with Jonny Vasquez eight years ago. Ka‘aiali‘i still co-owns The Daley smash burger bar and with Resich, Pizza Mamo, smaller eateries that flank Encore’s brick-walled space. A big reason for deciding to close it, he says, were the pandemic and post-pandemic strains of running the bigger restaurant, and a desire to focus on the new pasta store.

SEE ALSO: You May Want to Eat at Chinatown’s New Burger Bar Daley

That store is 200 square feet carved out of a new commercial kitchen next door to Resich’s Brick Fire Tavern on Wai‘alae Avenue. When Brick Fire added pasta to its menu of Neapolitan pizzas, that pasta came from Onetti’s Onda Pasta, which expanded from its farmers market beginnings to wholesaling to about two dozen local restaurants, Farm Link and Foodland Farms. And with Onetti preferring to focus on pasta-making classes, Resich says it was almost a no-brainer for him and Ka‘aiali‘i to buy the business to take it to the next level: a store where customers could stop in for fresh pasta, sauces and accompaniments for an easy dinner at home.

Onetti still has a small share of the business and comes in about once a week. “He planted a tree,” Resich says. “We’re trying to make it into an orchard.”

Opening Saturday, March 16, from noon to 8 p.m., and Wednesday to Sunday thereafter from noon to 8 p.m., 3449 Wai‘alae Ave., @ondapastaprovisions