Delta Family Passes Down Tradition of Homemade Pasta

Delta native Josephine Morlino grew up making homemade pasta in her home with her parents.

- Paige McKay

Her mother was born here, but her father came to the U.S. from Northern Italy. So, making pasta was something she did frequently as a child. To this day, 90-year-old Josephine is still making pasta, only now it’s with her grandson, Phillip, and his young children.

Phillip and his grandmother have been making pasta together for several years after Phillip learned that his oldest son, a picky eater when he was younger, loved Josephine’s homemade pasta.

“He was picky, but he’d eat her pasta,” Phillip said. From there, it became a fun, family tradition for Josephine to make pasta with her great-grandchildren and her grandson Phillip.

“We got a pasta maker at the house, and it was something fun that the kids could do with her,” Phillip said. “Those kinds of memories are priceless.”

Phillip eventually told Josephine that her pasta was so good that she should try to sell it, and that’s when Morlino’s Pasta came to be.

About two years ago, when Downtown Butcher and Mercantile opened in downtown Greenville, Phillip began making his mother’s pasta recipe in a separate “pasta room” located inside the mercantile. A pasta machine was shipped over from Italy, Phillip met all the health department regulations, and he and his grandmother began making pasta to be sold in the mercantile.