Pasta Familias

Family. Culture. Entrepreneurship. These are the principles that guide Angelo’s Italian market. Together, father and son Mike and Chris Marra dreamt up a unique fresh pasta shop honoring their Italian heritage. When asked what Italian-inspired principles they use to dictate their recipes, Mike jokes, “lots of garlic and extra virgin olive oil.”

Who is Angelo?

Angelo is the name of Mike’s father and Chris’s grandfather. Angelo’s parents were Italian immigrants who ended up planting roots in Cleveland, Ohio, in the early 1900s. Though Angelo was born in Cleveland, he eventually journeyed down to Indianapolis in the 1950s and moved to Fishers in the 1980s, where he lived out the remainder of his life. Angelo built a tunnel business, and Chris says he had always looked up to his grandfather’s entrepreneurial spirit. This was a major contributing factor for naming Mike and Chris’s business after his grandfather. Unfortunately, Angelo passed away in April 2021, before the conception of Angelo’s Italian Market in January 2022.

“He would have been our number one investor,” Chris says. “He definitely would have been here every day if he was alive, telling us what we’re doing wrong, helping us out and talking to the customers.”

“And testing the food,” Mike adds.

Mike is no stranger to the food and beverage industry, having worked over 40 years in various roles, including back of house, front of the house, management and ownership positions. Chris’s background, however, is in agriculture, transportation and renewable energy. Though Chris did not have direct food and beverage industry experience, his previous work experience allowed him to learn the “behind the scenes” of what it takes to run a business. He specifically mentions that he learned a lot about himself through his previous endeavors, how to manage his time and how to better communicate with people.

Coming from a family of entrepreneurs, Chris has always dreamed of owning his own business. He jokes that his wife, Sarah, has had to listen to him present her with hundreds of business ideas during the 17 years they have been together. When Mike initially proposed the idea of the Italian market, he envisioned the shop to be primarily centered around the retail of a variety of Italian products. But Chris had doubts about only offering retail products. So, Mike and Chris brainstormed. They landed on the idea of an Italian market that would also sell fresh pasta and homemade sauces based on Mike’s grandmother’s recipes.

Growing up, Mike would visit his grandmother, Mary Marra, in Cleveland, and during their time together they would make fresh pasta and sauces in the garage of her home. “She would make the cavatelli by hand with her thumb,” Mike says.

For Mike, the joy of spending time and cooking with his grandmother inspired the tradition of gathering his family together on Sundays at their home in Fishers to make Italian dishes. One of the main staples of their Sunday meals was Mary’s slow-simmered marinara sauce. Mike has concocted his own rendition of the sauce over the years, and today it serves as one of Angelo’s top-selling products at the market.

After 16 months of testing recipes, Mike and Chris decided on five signature sauces to sell at Angelo’s: the Sunday red sauce, garlic formaggio, ragu alla Angelo’s, vodka cream sauce and a basil pesto. The Sunday red sauce is a marinara sauce, which also serves as the base of the ragu alla Angelo’s, containing meat. The garlic formaggio sauce, containing garlic, black pepper, pecorino Romano, parmesan Reggiano, ricotta and fontina, was designed to be a marriage of an alfredo sauce and a cacio e pepe sauce, which typically contains pecorino Romano, black pepper and pasta water. In addition to the sauces, Mike and Chris make fresh pasta daily. They offer a variety of extruded pasta, stuffed pasta as well as take-and-bake pasta, like lasagna.

What differentiates Angelo’s offerings from what you find at the grocery store boils down to ingredients. Angelo’s has established several partnerships with manufacturers and farmers throughout the Midwest who aid in the development of the goods they serve in-store. Dewig Meats, located in Haubstadt, Indiana, supplies meat products and delivers directly to the market every Tuesday. In addition, Angelo’s uses only spices from Marion-Kay Spices, located in Brownstown, Indiana. The key to their singular pasta is special flour sourced from Janie’s Mill, in Ashkum, Illinois.

Janie’s Mill produces its flour using stone-milling, which involves grinding the entire kernel of grain and monitoring the temperature of the stones to ensure the nutrient-rich bran and germ are incorporated into the flour instead of being extracted during the process. Stone-milling results in a flour that offers more flavor and more nutrition than typical store-bought flours.

Though they offer drastically different products, Dewig Meats, Marion-Kay Spices, Janie’s Mill and Angelo’s are all centered on one thing: family. These businesses are all family owned and operated. The opportunity to work alongside each other is one of the things that Chris and Mike take immense pride in.

“We want to do this together,” says Chris. “It is not something that we build and then run from. We want it to be a family business.”

Chris left his job in May 2022 and Mike left his job in December 2022 to fully commit to the dream of running their own business. Though Chris and Mike got the wheels turning for the conception of Angelo’s, several other family members contribute to the project as well. Chris’s mother (Mike’s wife, Kathy), despite having a full-time job, comes in two to three mornings a week and every other Saturday to help with the morning preparations of food. Chris’s sister aided in the grand opening of the business in April of this year, and Chris’s nephew helped make pasta on the weekends all throughout the summer before heading back to school.

“I can’t keep them out of Angelo’s. They love coming here, playing around on the tables, watching pasta being made over there [motioning to the pasta machine], or acting like they’re making pasta here [motioning to the large table in front of him] and making big messes,” he says. “They love all things Angelo’s.”

Mike and Chris have dreams of opening a second location and expanding their offerings at the current shop. They also hope to keep building their arsenal of local suppliers to increase camaraderie with other businesses in the area. For Mike and Chris, the most memorable experience of opening the market has been the response of the community. They emphasize their appreciation for both their new and returning customers.

“We like our stuff. We thought people would like it,” says Chris. “And we’re really happy people actually do really like it.” 

Angelo’s Italian Market
11649 Maple St., Suite 95 
Fishers, IN 
www.EatAngelosPasta.com

HOW TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT NOODLES FOR YOUR SAUCE
 

When cooking pasta at home, most people reach for whatever sauce and noodles are in their pantry, mixing them together without a second thought. However, most chefs choose specific noodles that complement the sauce. The following are Mike and Chris’s recommendations for pairing the noodles they offer at Angelo’s with specific sauces:

For a light cream sauce, use mafalde noodles. Mafalde noodles are similar to fettuccine noodles but offer more textured edges to introduce contrast to the thin, smooth sauce.

For oil-based or butter-based sauces, use ravioli or other stuffed pastas to not overwhelm the flavors and the ingredients inside the pasta.

For pesto, campanelle or gemelli noodles are suggested as the curves and grooves of the noodles help the pesto adhere to them.

For bolognese or ragu, jumbo rigatoni or pappardelle noodles pair well as the “heavy duty” nature of the pasta helps carry the thicker sauces.

For tomato-based sauces, choose bucatini or ziti, so the thin sauce can cling to the noodles more successfully.