On February 12th Grist opened the doors to their new shop at 46 W 5th street, Dayton. Stay for a sandwich or leave with some of their house made pasta, tasty sweets, or house pickled veggies!

When I asked Patrick Van Voorhis of Grist in Dayton a simple question—why pasta?—he laughed. “I liked playing with Play-Doh as a kid, and I wanted to keep doing it as an adult.”

Talk with Patrick for long and you’ll hear him return to the tangible textures of dough over and over.

“I’ve been making pasta since I was 11 years old,” he says. “There’s something zen about losing yourself in pasta dough. It’s an ever-living thing.” At Grist, Patrick and his wife and business partner, Casey, work with that dough every day, making excellent pastas, breads, and related provisions. But their cooking careers weren’t always so zen. After graduating from the Culinary Institute of America, the pair worked at world-class restaurants around the country, including the Michelin-starred Quince and Acquerello in San Francisco. But they tired of the pace and the workload, and wanted to return to the simple joys of cooking.

Patrick is athletically built and has a chef’s knife tattooed on his arm, but there’s a childlike enthusiasm in his voice when he talks about the ingredients he and Casey work with. “You have to give the best to get the best,” he explains. “Pasta in its simplest form is very few ingredients. Education is a big component of helping people understand why our pasta might cost a little more.”

“That’s something that opens the door to get people to understand the product,” says Casey. “I’ve had people say they’ve never seen pasta as yellow as ours. Well, that’s because there’s 30 egg yolks in every pound of dough.” Casey’s mom drives more than an hour each Wednesday to deliver eggs from her farm to Grist.

After a wild few years in fine dining, Casey and Patrick are finding their groove in a simpler setting, one that not only fulfills their passions but allows them the chance to breathe.

“The other day, I was listening to Frank Sinatra on the radio and making pasta,” reflects Patrick. “It took me back to my childhood.”

— David Nilsen