Still made the way it started.
Hi, I'm Christen. I spent years in Italy learning to cook from the grandmothers there, then started this in a Plymouth, Michigan kitchen in 2019, grinding basil by hand for Sunday dinner. One jar at a time it outgrew the kitchen. The way it's made didn't change.
- 2019
The first jars were for family, at Sunday dinner.
It started with a marble mortar and too much basil. I lived in Italy for years, and the women who taught me to cook were Italian grandmothers. They made pesto in small bowls, seven ingredients and nothing that didn’t belong, and that’s how I made it for my own family on Sundays. Then the neighbors asked. The asking turned into a waitlist, and the waitlist turned into this.
I still grind it by hand, the way they taught me, which takes longer than it has to. That’s on purpose.
The farm is an hour west of Plymouth.
Our basil comes off one farm in Washtenaw County. It gets cut at dawn, lands in our kitchen by lunch, and goes into jars before dinner, which is the whole reason it tastes like the field instead of like a jar. We buy the row, not the leaf. Stems carry flavor too.
In winter, we pause. Frozen basil is not the same basil.
The method is mostly just timing.
We grate the Parmigiano-Reggiano the morning it goes in, because pre-shredded cheese is a shortcut and you can taste the shortcut. The pine nuts get toasted on a sheet pan the day they’re used, not the week before. Then a peppery Sicilian Nocellara oil goes over the top and carries the rest of it. Real pine nuts, by the way. Not cashews.
None of this is clever. It’s just slower, and slow is the only advantage a kitchen our size has. Stir a spoonful into hot pasta with the burner off and you’ll taste where the time went.
What we do not bend on.
Basil first
The basil comes off a farm in Washtenaw County, an hour west of Plymouth. Cut in the morning, in the pot that afternoon.
No shortcuts
No xanthan gum, no citric acid, no potassium sorbate. Seven things go in the Classic jar and you can pronounce all of them. Read the big-brand jar next to ours and count.
Cold case, not the shelf
Heat bruises basil and turns pesto grey, so the jars stay cold from the kitchen to the store. Look in the cooler, near the fresh pasta. Not the sauce aisle.
I know it’s a nuisance that you can’t buy this from me right here. It has to stay cold the whole way, and I trust a grocer with a cold case more than I trust a box sitting on a porch in July. The grandmothers who taught me in Italy made pesto for a table where people sat down and ate, and that’s still the only ask. Use it on a Tuesday. Not a holiday.
Christen Romano
Makes the pesto
Stocked at your kitchen store
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