Michael Toscano received much acclaim as the executive chef of Perla, an Italian restaurant in the Village, where he ran the kitchen from its 2012 opening till 2014. The place closed just three years after he left, but now Toscano and his restaurateur wife, Caitlin, are back at the same 24 Minetta Lane spot, where the chef-owners are opening Da Toscano on Wednesday.
Luckily for pasta lovers, he’s bringing his secret weapon back with him: Josefa Campos.
The unassuming mother of three, who worked with Toscano at Perla, makes the pasta for the house specialties such as agnolotti stuffed with roasted lamb and orecchiette with broccoli pesto and Italian sausage.
Campos, 35, never attended cooking school, and hadn’t even produced so much as a strand of spaghetti before being taken under the chef’s wing in 2012. Back then, Toscano was just getting Perla up to speed when his Babbo-trained pasta-maker quit for another job. Toscano put out word that he needed a replacement. A friend suggested that he meet with Campos, whose restaurant experience was limited to tossing salads in Tribeca kitchens.
“Michael asked if I wanted him to teach me to make pasta,” Campos tells The Post. “I said, ‘Of course.’”
Toscano, 34, explains why he hired her: “I prefer an inexperienced person with a great attitude. Then I show you how to do it, you do it my way, and you don’t have to unlearn bad habits.”
The gambit worked. Within two weeks, she was making state-of-the-art pasta for a restaurant where gnocchi and the like took pride of place.
However, Campos, whose small hands are perfectly proportioned for shaping pasta, says that getting there was a trek.
“The first day I made pasta for [customers], I was so scared that I was almost crying,” she says. “Michael is very strict. He likes everything perfect.”
Last week, as Toscano composes dishes for his newly hired waitstaff to taste, Campos is in the kitchen making her signature orecchiette. Italian for “little ear,” orecchiette is shaped like a tiny bowl, and each piece is formed by hand.
After carefully mixing flour, semolina and water into a dough, she rolls it to breadstick dimensions and chops that into pellet-size pieces. She then stands each pellet in her palm and makes an indent by pressing down with her index finger. She speedily produces one exemplar after the other.
“This is my favorite pasta to make,” she says of the ingredient that will be cooked al dente and swirled up with sweet Italian sausage, broccoli raab pesto and pickled cherry peppers. “I probably make 1,000 of them a day.”
The tiny cups pile up on a wooden table in the kitchen before getting tossed into boiling water for the briefest spell. Marveling at his protégée’s handiwork, Toscano says, “She has the perfect fingertip to produce the ideal dimple. Josefa makes it look so easy but it is so hard.”
Campos shrugs off the compliment. “I like pasta,” she says. “And when you like something, you make it perfect.”
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