Meet our pasta maestro!

It all started with a small pasta machine and the vision of making tasty fresh pasta accessible to everyone.

Thus began Darren Tan’s journey into entrepreneurship, when he founded PastaGo in 2022, which has since become a popular go-to spot for its freshly made, pocket-friendly pasta.

Darren, a Food Science and Technology (2022) alumnus, discovered his calling when the pandemic compelled him to hone his home cooking skills. This, coupled with the lack of affordable pasta offerings in Singapore then, led him to collaborate with another food technology startup to develop the menu, brand and overall concept of PastaGo. 

“Science concepts and the scientific method of thinking have contributed to the successful development of many of our products,” he says.

PastaGo has since expanded to five outlets, offering different shapes of pasta and combining them with traditional Italian flavours, as well as contemporary and local flavours. However, the journey was not without its challenges.

For instance, Darren’s team faced issues on product consistency. The freezing of one of their emulsions resulted in the inefficacy of starch in producing a simple emulsion. As a result, they had to work with other resistant starches to achieve a desired stability after freezing.

The execution of many of PastaGo’s recipes was also affected by how aroma is released and how it changes with processing, such as through freezing or overcooking. The team also faced issues on significantly differing cooking times based on the flour and machines used to produce the noodles, as well as storage conditions.

Another key challenge was to ensure that the pasta retains its chewy texture as a takeaway product consumed after some time. Darren’s team overcame this through the precise combination of specific flours, additives and hydration levels.

He says, “The core scientific thought process of isolating cause and effect was tremendously helpful in finding solutions to these problems. Many of the food science concepts relating to shelf-life, foodborne pathogens, emulsion science and flavour development played a big role in our growth as a company.”

For Darren, PastGo’s success is a story of how food science concepts – such as emulsion stability, the use of scientific concepts such as the Maillard reaction and the rigorous application of scientific techniques to solve problems – can be actively operationalised into real-world solutions in the food and beverage industry.