• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• Gallus executive chef and co-owner Antonio Rentas making fresh pasta

Charlie Bucket dreamed of touring the chocolate factory. My golden-ticket fantasy whisks me behind the scenes into a pasta production kitchen. I'm entranced by the Instagram account Pasta Grannies, mostly dedicated to videos in which the gnarled hands of Italian nonnas expertly mix, knead and shape hundreds of kinds of pasta, from tortelloni to Sicilian maccaruna.

Sadly, I don't get to taste them.

That is not the case with another Instagram account I follow. Under the handle @Ovadynamo, Meaghan Hunt hits similar sensory pleasure buttons as the nonnas, and she's doing it in Waterbury for Gallus Handcrafted Pasta, a new restaurant exactly 26 minutes from my home.

I have watched a video of the 33-year-old pasta prep cook pouring a deli container of sun-yellow yolks into a cratered mound of flour and transforming these two simple ingredients into silken, saffron-colored sheets of pasta more times than I care to admit. And the pasta tastes as good as it looks.

Gallus is the latest venture of chef Eric Warnstedt's Heirloom Hospitality. It occupies the beloved former home of his first restaurant, Hen of the Wood, which will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year. The pasta spot opened on June 26 in Waterbury's historic gristmill, where the original Hen built a national reputation for elevated farm-to-table cuisine before moving half a mile away in spring 2023 to South Main Street.

My main regret after dinner for four at Gallus on a recent Saturday evening was not ordering one of each pasta on offer. There were only six; surely we could have managed the pair we reluctantly omitted to leave room for some non-pasta menu options.

Do not repeat my mistake: When you head to Gallus, eat all the pasta.

• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• Clockwise from left: Cappellacci, lasagna and gnocco fritto with mortadella at Gallus Handcrafted Pasta

Whimsically hat-shaped cappellacci ($21) were paired with a rich mushroom sauce and scattered with crunchy breadcrumbs. Pillowy, ricotta-filled ravioli ($26) bathed in a crave-worthy brown butter beef and pork Bolognese. An exemplary spaghetti and meatballs ($26) matched perfectly balanced tomato sugo with delicately textured meatballs and square-edged spaghetti alla chitarra.

The only pasta dish that gave us pause was the clam tagliatelle ($24). We initially felt we were playing hide-and-seek with tiny chopped clams in a sauce that teetered on the edge of too salty. The tagliatelle, however, was — like all the other pastas — crafted and cooked to al dente perfection. Once we got over our expectation of shell-on clams, we polished it off, concluding that the oceanic salinity worked.

In a coy nod to its older sibling, Gallus was named after the ancestor of the domesticated chicken — essentially, Latin for "hen." When Warnstedt announced the long-rumored move of Waterbury's Hen of the Wood into a brand-new, custom-built restaurant space last year, he noted that the mill was long on charm but short on square footage in the kitchen. After some minor renovations and a décor refresh, Heirloom opened the more casual Gallus, which takes advantage of prep space in the expansive kitchens at the new, nearby Hen.

It was in those kitchens last week that I had my golden-ticket visit to witness, in person, the alchemic magic of pasta making.

• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• Executive chef and co-owner Antonio Rentas making fresh pasta with Tiffany Caldwell and Meaghan Hunt

When I arrived, the pasta-team trio of Antonio Rentas, Tiffany Caldwell and Hunt (aka @Ovadynamo) were working together around a large wooden table with a vibrantly green pasta dough hued with parsley water.

Rentas, 35, is executive chef of Gallus and the Waterbury Hen, where he started cooking nine years ago after moving from New York City back to Vermont. The New England Culinary Institute grad has since steadily worked his way up. Now he and Emmi Kern, who is general manager of the two restaurants, each have an ownership stake in Gallus.

"My driving passion is pasta," Rentas said as he kneaded dough, rolled it into long ropes and sliced them into nuggets for Caldwell and Hunt to shape into small, grooved curls using wooden cavatelli boards.

"I love the way the dough feels," the chef said. "I like that you can Zen out. It slows down a world that is so busy."

Caldwell, 44, has worked at Hen for a year as commissary supervisor. She described herself as an artist, farmer and cook. As somebody who's done pottery, she said, she appreciates the art and craft of pasta. "It's impermanent art that can be celebrated without having to be put on a shelf," Caldwell said.

The team produces almost 200 pounds of pasta a week, dough ball by dough ball. Most is for Gallus, but some is for Hen's locations in Waterbury and Burlington. The trio makes two types of dough: one with 00 Caputo flour, enriched with the yolks of eggs from an Irasburg farm; and another made with semolina and water.

For now, those become one of four basic pasta types, including sheets used for filled pastas, such as ravioli, and for the mushroom lasagna on the restaurant menu. (There is also a meat lasagna on the roster of frozen pastas available to take home.)

• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• Meaghan Hunt making fresh ravioli

As Hunt filled a tray with green cavatelli, Caldwell moved on to check a resting dough ball, then ran it through the pasta machine to make wide sheets. From those, she cut circles and deftly formed the cappellacci dei briganti we had eaten with mushrooms. The new-to-me pasta is named for a conical brimmed hat historically worn by political agitators in Southern Italy. For me, it recalled the "bad hat" of Ludwig Bemelmans' Madeline books.

Meanwhile, Hunt — the newest team member, who has been a farmer, cook and barista — started working with a tool strung with thin wires to press sheets of pasta into the spaghetti alla chitarra ("guitar" in Italian) we had enjoyed with meatballs.

Rentas explained that specific shapes go well with different sauces. He paired the cappellacci with mushrooms, he said, because the pasta looks a little like fungi and the empty hats cradle the chunky sauce. Cavatelli works well with a thicker, richer sauce, like the mascarpone-pesto with which it is served at Gallus.

His description made me even more annoyed at myself for not ordering that pasta. Rentas suggested I pop by for a plate of pasta and a glass of wine from the affordably priced list, in which bottles top out at $55. I'm hoping to do that soon, and when I do, I'll put in a plea for a glass of the Villa di Corlo lambrusco, currently only offered by the bottle ($40). The wine's sunny, ripe-berry effervescence is a perfect pairing for pasta.

The good thing about Gallus is that, unlike at the original Hen of the Wood, there is a little room for walk-ins at a new, four-seat counter, part of the effort to make it more stop-by casual. During fine weather, the outdoor patio adds 25 chairs to the small, 45-seat restaurant. "The patio at five o'clock is where it's at," Rentas said.

• Jeb Wallace-Brodeur
• The dining room at Gallus Handcrafted Pasta in Waterbury

Along with the counter, the space boasts new lighting and a dark blue paint refresh but will feel largely familiar to those who dined at the original Hen, despite the clear change in restaurant concept.

While you can go solo, I recommend heading to Gallus with a group so you can taste all the pastas, along with a few other highlights. Rentas emphasized that the menu was conceived with communal dining in mind. (The kitchen can sub Trenchers Farmhouse's very good, Vermont-made gluten-free pasta upon request.)

I don't regret the stomach space we allotted to the delightful, savory fried dough triangles called gnocco fritto ($12), topped with excellent mortadella from Waitsfield's 5th Quarter. And though my dining companions ridiculed me for ordering the focaccia with pecorino Romano butter ($8; "More carbs?!"), they happily gobbled it down. Pro tip: Save some to mop up every drop of pasta sauce.

The bright, crunchy Caesar ($7/$14), sprinkled unexpectedly with a little chopped hardcooked egg, was an unusual and welcome green vegetable sighting on the menu. I would have loved some simple, sautéed broccoli rabe or other bitter greens to complement the rich pastas.

We did order one of the two large dishes under the "Table" section of the menu: the pork Milanese ($33) with radicchio, buttermilk and anchovy. The kitchen also sent out the monkfish steak ($40) with stewed peppers, cherry tomatoes and olives. Despite the Milanese's promising flavor combination, we were underwhelmed by the hefty slab of breaded, fried pork.

The Mediterranean-inspired monkfish, on the other hand, was moist, meaty and delicious — but that mesmerizing pasta is what will draw me back to Gallus. And I'll likely bring a cooler to take some of its frozen to-go pasta magic home with me.