Like many fans of Italian cuisine, Roberta Adamo enjoys pasta in all its variety. But in her case, pasta is not only a food she enjoys: It’s the focus of her career.

At Center City’s posh Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia hotel, Adamo holds the title of pasta chef.

The chef, who got her start cooking pasta at a restaurant on Castor Avenue 10 years ago, has been in charge since August of all the pasta served at the hotel’s elegant Pantheon restaurant, which features Italian cuisine.

Anyone who thinks making pasta is just a matter of cooking noodles hasn’t seen an expert pasta chef at work. And this is one chef who makes pasta the old-fashioned way.

“All the dough is handmade and it’s handworked,” says Adamo, whose hands can deftly transform dough into all sorts of pasta shapes — from delicate pasta that looks like a mushroom to the wide-cut flat noodle pappardelle. Gnocci, ravioli, lasagne, garganelli, penne, linguini — all of these and more are part of her wide-ranging repertoire.

Starting at 7 a.m., Adamo is at work in the hotel’s state-of-the-art kitchen.

Wearing her crisp white chef’s coat, she stands at a long table to prepare all the pasta served at Pantheon that day, as well as pasta for the hotel’s banquets and the lounge.

THATSA LOTTA PASTA

During the course of a typical workday, she makes about 75 servings of fresh pasta — about 15 pounds of pasta, all made by hand.

Often, patrons are surprised to find out that the chef in the kitchen is making the pasta dough by hand.

“It’s becoming a lost art. People just don’t make handmade pasta anymore,” says Adamo, 43, whose personable, low-key style is an asset in the high-pressure environment of restaurant cooking.

“There’s a special taste to handmade pasta, and that’s what I want to create. It’s a labor of love.”

And it’s labor that is full of challenge.

“You have to know when it’s exactly the right consistency, not too wet or too dry, and that’s tricky,” says Adamo. Then, too, a pasta chef even has to pay attention to the amount of moisture in the air.

“Pasta is sensitive to the atmosphere. It can get rubbery if there’s too much moisture in the air,” Adamo explains. “On a rainy day, you have to be careful to adjust for the moisture, because flour absorbs moisture from the air.”

Indeed, pasta requires attentive care from start to finish.

“It’s a very delicate thing,” the chef says. “It requires a certain skill, a special touch. For instance, when you roll it out, it needs to be dry to the touch but still pliable.”

That sense of touch can only come from practice.

“The only way to become really good at making pasta is to do it over and over,” the chef says. “With practice, you get to know it so well that you instinctively know about the timing, the handling, the storing.”

That’s certainly true in the case of chef Adamo, who’s had years of pasta practice.

SOMEONE’S IN THE KITCHEN

It all began in her mother’s kitchen, where young Roberta watched as her mother made pasta. Her specialty was handmade gnocci with sweet potato and ricotta cheese.

“I loved it so much that I asked my mother to show me how to make it,” Adamo says.

With practice, she soon mastered her mother’s recipe, and then tried out other pasta dishes, too. By the time she married and started a family, pasta was a staple of her cooking repertoire.

But she never planned to become a professional chef. Nor did she have any training. Indeed, she’s an entirely self-taught chef whose career began unexpectedly when she was virtually drafted into service.

It happened when her husband, a native of Sicily, opened his own Italian restaurant in 1990, Isola Bella, fulfilling a longtime dream.

The cozy 40-seat restaurant, at 6516 Castor Ave., was a success from the start. But one month after the eatery opened, the chef quit suddenly. There was no time to find a replacement, not when a weekend was coming and all the tables were booked.

Her husband turned to the home cook, whose skill he knew well — the cook with a passion for pasta.

“He called and said, ‘Roberta, come into the kitchen and make the pasta!’” recalls Adamo, who was then a busy mother of three children, two of them school age and the youngest only 3 months old.

“I packed up the playpen and put it and the baby in the middle of the restaurant floor,” recalls this resourceful mother.

While her infant son Roberto played with wooden spoons and rubber spatulas, his mother went to work preparing pasta.

The last-minute chef started with a recipe for ravioli she found in a magazine, using trial and error to get it just right for restaurant patrons.

BY THE SEAFOOD PASTA

Soon she was also making seafood ravioli, wild mushroom and rabbit ravioli and other adventurous pasta dishes. She also experimented with all kinds of flavorings for the dough: roasted pepper, squid ink, beet puree. The ambitious chef was tireless in seeking out pasta possibilities.

Northeast residents became loyal patrons, some returning week after week and even becoming personal friends. The restaurant soon earned a Philadelphia magazine Best of Philadelphia rating for best Italian restaurant in the Northeast in 1993.

When she and her husband divorced five years later and sold the restaurant, Adamo landed a chef’s position at Catelli in Voorhees, N.J., where she made both pastas and desserts.

But it was pasta that paved the way for the next giant step on her career path.

About four years ago, renowned chef Georges Perrier, of Le Bec Fin in Center City, invited her to become a chef at Brasserie Perrier, his second restaurant, at Walnut Street near 16th. Perrier hired her specifically to create pastas.

It was a dream come true — literally.

“I actually had a dream about working for Georges Perrier,” she confesses. “And then it came true — all because of pasta! It has opened so many doors for me.”

And Adamo made the most of this newly open door.

ONLY THE BEST SHALL DO

“I bought every pasta book I could find,” she says. “When you work for chefs who are the best in the industry, you want to do your best, too.”

Soon she was creating specialties such as gnocci with Bolognese sauce, which won over actor Bruce Willis. When he was filming The Sixth Sense and came to dine one evening with a party of friends, he liked it so much that he ordered this pasta for the entire table.

Another admirer was Chef Perrier himself.

“He was always supportive,” says Adamo. “And when he invited guests to dinner, he would insist that they try at least two pastas. He’d often bring me out to introduce me, saying, ‘Meet the pasta lady!’ ”

After three and a half years at Brasserie Perrier, a new door opened in August. Again, pasta paved the way.

Adamo was offered the position of pasta chef at Pantheon restaurant, a brand-new Italian restaurant at the Ritz-Carlton, which had moved into its gleaming new quarters at Broad and Chestnut streets.

It was an offer she could not refuse.

“I love it!” says the chef, who is energetic and enthusiastic even after a full day in the kitchen.

Working in collaboration with Chef de Cuisine Alberto Vanoli, she usually prepares five types of pasta on the menu each day.

Always eager to try something new when it comes to pasta, she’s dreaming up a dessert pasta to be made with chestnut and Tahitian vanilla bean.

She’s also experimenting with new ways to season the pasta dough, using herbs grown in her own home garden in Blackwood, N.J.

Even after a busy day at work, she still cooks pasta at home for the family.

“The kitchen is still my favorite place at home,” she says. Her son Roberto, 10, is proud to be assistant pasta chef at home. And son Salvatore, 18, and daughter Christine, 15, are longtime pasta fans.

And so, of course, is their mother. Whether she cooks it at home or at the Ritz Carlton, her passion for pasta is as intense as ever.

“Pasta is unique and special,” she says. “I’ll never get tired of it!”