Last year my younger brother Peter, who attends Middlebury College in Vermont, took a term abroad to live in London. He traveled with his friends throughout Europe, including a stint in Paris where he discovered a fast food pasta restaurant -- a concept with which he fell in love. 

My family is big on pasta. While we stock the dried kind at home, we also sometimes make fresh pasta, a practice which I have adopted here in Los Angeles. Anyway, needless to say, we loooove pasta. 

So, after this trip to Europe, Peter came home with the decision to open a fast food pasta restaurant either in NYC or near a college campus. The idea would be to serve freshly made pasta with the choice of three sauces at a reasonable price. This morning I noticed an article in the Wall Street Journal, sigh, that reports on two fast food pasta restaurant hitting the Big Apple. Up first is new chain Hello Pasta with its first location opening in June and 10 more planned down the road, as well as bigger French chain Nooi also opening in the city. The goal? "...to be the Starbucks or Pinkberry of pasta." [WSJ]