Naked Pasta in the Village of West Greenville is a picturesque space.
The business functions as a grocery store where guests can take restaurant-quality plates home and finish the assembly there. Natural wines from small-scale producers and Oreno Hellenic Ladi olive oil adorn the entrance, along with refrigerators of pasta and sauces made in-house.
The shop is small – about 500 square feet. That’s about to change.
A wine and beer bar will be added. It will serve small plates so guests can have a glass of wine and a snack. With the changes, the store could nearly double in size. Although the soon-to-be grocery and wine bar may host a pasta or lasagna night, the goal is to stay true to its roots.
“We’ll do some pasta things, but kind of want to keep that where you can be creative at home and cook,” said owner Christina Barest. “By making this change, the store may also become a place guests can go before going out to dinner.”
Barest hopes to add a garage door to the storefront so the pasta shop can provide indoor-outdoor seating. She also wants to add to the grocery element by offering more take-and-bake options and fresh produce from local farmers.
Naked Pasta is located at 1286 Pendleton St., which neighbors Villa West Designs. Sarah O’Dell, owner of the interior design studio, owns the two properties.
O’Dell and her husband purchased her studio part of the building in 2019 and Naked Pasta’s property in 2022. At the time, the pasta purveyor was looking for a larger space.
“We’re neighbors of Naked Pasta’s and so I had heard that they were looking to move into a larger location,” O’Dell said. “I hated to see them go because they’ve been great neighbors.”
From there, discussions began about how to give Naked Pasta the space it needed to stay in the Village.
Ultimately, it came down to expanding the space Villa West is in upstairs and giving some of its space on the first floor to the grocery.
“We’re taking a lot of my business upstairs to the second floor,” O’Dell said. “[We’re] still keeping something on the first, but kind of forgoing some of the space that we initially had planned for, for my business for them.”
O’Dell is excited about the changes and has plans for the building to reflect an Old World-modern twist on an art deco design. Those plans are not set in stone, and structural changes are pending approval.
