The most traditional of Italian dishes meets the innovation of a ‘quick’ and dynamic service which is also affordable for everyone.
It is not just an Italian saying that goes “a good dish of pasta may bring people happiness...”and when you are sitting at a restaurant and you are able to order what you prefer, you are definitely in the right place. At the new fast-pasta restaurants here, pasta is the real protagonist and is accompanied by the best sauces of the Italian tradition.
You can compose the dish as you wish! Rhyme intended.
In this new formula diners, unlike at traditional restaurants, you can choose any pasta shape (both fresh and dry), even gluten-free and whole-wheat pasta.
The fresh pasta offer is great, and it goes from traditional Ligurian trofie to spinach gnocchi or gorgonzola and radicchio filled ravioli.
They even have seasonal offers like fresh fish filled ravioloni (big ravioli) in the summer and pumpkin filled ravioli in the fall.
The ‘fast’ service doesn’t mean low quality, quite the opposite.
All the pastas are homemade and so are the sauces. The ingredients are always of excellent quality and the composable menu, created to satisfy all palates. In fact, more creative sauces are added to the recipes of traditional Italian cuisine, prepared with the desire to amaze with original, delicate, and delicious combinations.
So, how to choose between short or long pasta? And when to choose the fresh one?
In Italy, it is said that every sauce calls for its own pasta shape and vice versa, therefore making all the right combinations could be a tricky game for true pasta connoisseurs.
At the new fast-pasta places you can choose among Tagliolini, Orecchiette, Rigatoni di Gragnano, Trofiette, Spaghetti alla Chitarra (squared spaghetti) and many more. All the pasta is produced with selected flours (classic ground wheat, whole wheat, Khorasan flour and gluten-free) and hand made by artisans of the “white art.”
The waiters are obviously there to help you make the right combinations. Some pasta sauces, like cacio & pepe (cheese and black pepper) or amatriciana (tomato and bacon) for instance, can “only” go with certain types of pasta (in the case of cacio & pepe and amatriciana is spaghetti) but of course the waiter won’t judge you if you choose to combine them in any other way.
It was actually fun to go to one of these places with my foreign friends and see what they would choose without knowing “the Italian rules” we have when it comes to our pasta.
The waiters are there to suggest you “the right” combinations or suggest you based on your personal taste. The waiter therefore becomes a sort of ‘pasta sommelier’ able to make the right matches.
Many sauces can go with many different types of pasta too.
I personally love to combine the nutty sauces with the fresh pastas and I make combos like pistachio pesto with gorgonzola and radicchio filled ravioli or walnut pesto with pumpkin filled ravioli.
Ravioli go well with any sauce…
…but Plin (pinch) ravioli are best with sage and butter or with a nutty sauce
The particularity of these restaurants is that you can compose your own dish and you make the menu. They only offer first courses, no meat or fish or salads so you better not be on a diet when you go!
They often offer a dessert list but, unfortunately, you can’t compose your own dessert or make a cake combination on the spot!
Maybe that will be the new frontier of compose-it-yourself restaurants.
