Local NC Chef Crowned World Champion

Greenville, NC, November 10, 2018 --(PR.com)-- Salvatore Passalacqua, local chef and co-owner of Marabella Restaurants, was recently named World Champion at the Northeast Pasta Showdown in Atlantic City.

Passalacqua joined several other chefs in Atlantic City, NJ earlier this month to compete at the International Pizza Expo’s Northeast Pasta Showdown, sponsored by the California Milk Advisory Board. The competition was held over a two-day period and each chef had to prepare two separate dishes – one, a signature dish, and the other a dish using a table of common ingredients supplied by the event. According to the official rules, the signature dishes were judged “on trueness to Italian cuisine’s basic tenets: technique, presentation, flavor balance and taste,” and the second dishes were intended to test the contestants’ creativity and imagination.

For his two dishes, Passalacqua prepared Cavatelli alla Contadina, a pasta made with flour and ricotta cheese, topped with a garlic tomato sauce with broccolini, pork sausage and smoked cheese, and Saltimbocca di Pollo with an orange cream sauce, a battered chicken breast with provolone, prosciutto, raisins and marsala wine on top of a bed of thin spaghetti. Both award winning dishes are now featured on the menu at Nino’s Cucina Italiana, Marabella Restaurant’s flagship Italian restaurant located in Greenville, NC.

In 2017, fellow co-owner and brother-in-law, Massimo Mannino also won first place at the Northeast Pasta Showdown – so it comes as no surprise that Nino’s Cucina Italiana has won the People’s Choice award at the March of Dimes’ annual Signature Chefs Auction fundraiser in 2013, 2014, 2015 and 2017 and Best Italian Restaurant in local newspaper, The Daily Reflector’s annual Best of Contest. Also, Marabella Old World Pizza won Best Pizza in Mixer, a local entertainment magazine, in 2010, 2011 and 2012, and in 2017, Marabella was named Best Pizza in The Daily Reflector’s annual Best of Contest.

Salvatore Passalacqua is Co-Owner/Co-Executive Chef of Marabella Restaurants which includes Nino’s Cucina Italiana in Greenville, NC, Marabella Italian Restaurant in Washington, NC and Marabella Old World Pizza in Greenville and Farmville, NC. Passalacqua enjoys sharing over 75 years of Italian family tradition that has been acquired over three generations, and continues to make food fresh daily from centuries-old authentic Italian and New York-style recipes.