Man, Berkeley thinks they're so great, with their schmancy Fourth Street neighborhood and their high property values. Well, Pasta Shop was an Oakland invention long before it arose in Berkeley!
They have a wonderful cheese selection where you can taste things all day long, and an exciting deli area, and a mind-boggling assortment of salt, and of olive oil, and... anything you can ever cook with, really. Seriously, I've never seen so many kinds of salt. I spent something like $8.50 on a little jar of Welsh sea salt smoked over Welsh oak and I haven't regretted it since. (It lasts forever, which brings the price down a lot....) And they're in the same building with Grace Baking (YUM) and some coffee place and a schmancy grocery store and I just love it all.
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