Chances are, if you’ve ordered fresh pasta at a restaurant in Houston, Dallas or San Antonio, you’ve probably eaten pasta made in Tomball. Della Casa Pasta is the dream of founder Luisa Obando, growing from a single KitchenAid mixer into one of Texas’ largest fresh pasta producers with 14 years of hard work.

When Obando moved to the United States from Colombia with two young kids, she discovered she didn’t tolerate the processed foods many Americans ate well. She began cooking everything from scratch, but like most parents, she quickly learned that finding time to prepare homemade meals wasn’t always easy.

Her solution turned out to be simple and delicious. Fresh pasta.

“Pasta is an easy dish,” Obando tells PaperCity The Woodlands. “It cooks in just a few minutes. You warm your sauce, cook the pasta and you have a homemade meal.”

With a business idea in mind, Obando decided to take a chance on herself.

“I bought one KitchenAid, learned how to make pasta, then bought another KitchenAid and another,” she says.

Needing a commercial kitchen, Obando rented a small corner inside a Mexican restaurant, where she made pasta with her growing collection of mixers before heading to The Woodlands and Tomball farmers markets each weekend.

Pasta lovers quickly embraced Della Casa. “My whole week’s production would sell out in less than two hours,” Orlando notes.

The overwhelming response meant it was time for larger equipment — and a larger kitchen.

Lusia Obando eventually rented space inside a catering kitchen in Tomball. When the catering company closed, the landlord offered her an opportunity that changed everything.

“He (charged me) half the rent for about a year until I grew enough to afford the full space,” Obando says. “He was an angel.”

The extra room allowed her to do more than expand her own production. Obando rented kitchen space by the hour to other food entrepreneurs, becoming an incubator for small businesses while mentoring them on pricing, food costs and business planning.

With a degree in economics and a background as a banker at Bank of America, helping others understand the financial side of the food business came naturally to Obando.

“I realized a lot of people knew how to cook, but they didn’t know what it actually cost to make a product or how much they should charge,” she says.

Della Casa Pasta truly taking off took an enormous personal investment. “I sold my house and put every dollar into the business,” Obando says.

That gamble paid off.

Today, Della Casa Pasta supplies fresh pasta to more than 160 restaurants across Texas, including Sixty Vines and Whiskey Cake, and many that Obando cannot reveal. One of her earliest commercial customers was chef Maurizio Ferrarese during his run at the Four Seasons Houston hotel restaurant, a relationship that helped launch Della Casa’s wholesale business.

More Than a Pasta Shop

Two years ago, Obando opened a Della Casa Pasta’s retail store, followed several months later by an adjacent bakery. Inside you will find more than 20 varieties of fresh pasta sold by the pound, along with refrigerated fresh sauces, frozen family meals, lasagnas and ready-to-heat dinners.

An entire wall is devoted to imported Italian pantry staples, including specialty flours, olive oils, tinned tomatoes, olives, spices and artisan breads. The imported ingredients are carefully selected, many from the same suppliers used by Central Market, giving home cooks in the greater Woodlands area access to premium products without making a special trip.

For busy families, Della Casa also offers complete meal bundles that include fresh pasta, sauce, salad and bread. It is enough to feed four people for about $42, with a rotating weekly menu. Refrigerator and freezer cases are also full of chef-prepared meals in a variety of portion sizes.

Just beyond the refrigerated cases, you can watch fresh pasta being made through large windows into the production kitchen, where Italian-made machines turn out hundreds of pounds of pasta each day.

What started with one KitchenAid mixer has become a Texas success story — proof that a simple family meal can grow into a thriving business. Luisa Obando has plans to open for a second pasta shop in the Houston area. Stay tuned there.

This pasta queen is not done yet.

Della Casa Pasta is located at 22525 Hufsmith – Kohrville Road in Tomball. It is open from 9 am to 6 pm Mondays through Fridays, and 9 am to 5 pm on Saturdays.