“We already have lots of regulars, and it’s only been four months,” Valerio Spadaro Guerra tells me when we meet on a rainy November morning in his shop, Casadora. “I thought it’d take longer to get customers, but it didn’t. The response has really been beyond my expectations. ”

We are in Rome’s Prati, a stately area just north of St. Peter’s Square, and Spadaro Guerra is showing me around the space he and five friends opened last August. Casadora is a pastificio—a pasta-making lab that sells fresh pasta daily, alongside a selection of artisanal and small-batch products like olive oils, sauces, and natural wines.