Atlanta businesswoman takes her pasta on the road

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Photos of Atlanta businesswoman Elisa Gambino and her pasta truck.

Elisa Gambino, who runs the Via Elisa Fresh Pasta shop, has been delivering her wares to Ansley Park and neighboring Sherwood Forest for the past eight months.

The service is a timely idea: People have been dining at home more than going to restaurants since the start of the recession.

Gambino has noted a 30 percent drop in her restaurant delivery business, consistent with the decrease in business that many area restaurants report.

Hjalmar Pompe and his 3-year-old daughter Amalia are on their way back to home after picking up their orders in Sherwood Forest.

Tom Lombardo, left, and his daughter Lucy, 12, and son Sam, 10, hold fresh pasta as Elisa Cambino (second from left) checks her order list at her second stop in Sherwood Forest.

"I bought the truck to make restaurant deliveries," Gambino said. "but I wasn't using it as late into the day. There was also a lot of construction [by the retail pasta shop] on Howell Mill Road. I wanted to find a way to get the pasta to the people."

Unlike an ice cream truck, the pasta truck doesn't randomly cruise into a neighborhood and announce its arrival with, say, a loudspeaker blaring a Tarentella. Gambino has prescribed 45-minute, early-evening stops in each of the neighborhoods to which she delivers.

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Elisa Gambino, who runs the Via Elisa Fresh Pasta shop, has been delivering her wares to Ansley Park and neighboring Sherwood Forest for the past eight months.

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