Maximum price you would pay for a bowl of pasta

Are we pricing one dish or that tasting menu?

Most I'd pay for pasta is about the same as what I'd pay for any kind of food, if I believed whatever hype was telling me it was really really really good.

$0.50 and that's it

Granted, I am not really into pasta; it's not one of the food choices I would make if it were my choice to pick the meal.

And my answer is going to be swayed by being vegetarian, and having had this experience, fairly often: Go to a ~nice~ restaurant as chosen by a family member or friend. The only vegetarian option on the menu is some "mushroom on pasta" variation which will be priced at £15. I would never willingly spend £15 on a bowl of pasta, but given the option of going without or trying to piece together two starters into a meagre meal, I pay £15 for the damn pasta. I guess that's about $25 these days?

Under normal circumstances I would expect a bowl of pasta in a vegetarian cafe to be about £5-£7, or the $10 option. But I probably wouldn't get it unless they'd run out of everything else, and the idea of a pasta taster menu is some kind of foodiebollocks nonsense, TBH.

Pricing one hypothetical dish - the tasting menu is just for effect xp

I'm gonna go with $30, but I'm a high-rolling social work student and all that.

also I do not want darragh's quip to go without the lol it deserves

$20 seems like a bad ceiling cuz bowls of pasta are always like $22 at good places

yep, 25 is a good place to draw the line

although I really like pasta I don't order it that often cos there's normally some novelty which is more remote from my own cooking. the fanciest pasta I've ever had has been pheasant ravioli that I helped make w/ a friend of mine who's a chef. not sure how much that cost us, but we were cooking for at least 2 roland kirk albums. heard tales of wondrous italian pasta dishes obtained w/ a bit of nous & ~10 euros

Tagliatelle, they love to say "in Italy, fresh pasta is seldom used" but we're not in Italy rn and fresh pasta is spectacular

Papardelle, I don't know the diff between this and tagliatelle but these are my first choice when it's time for pasta

Spaghetti

Linguine, which ranks slightly below spaghetti because it's just slightly less exciting

Lasagna, the ultimate never-fail show-stopper

Farfalle, ranks higher if there are children at the table

Campanelle, what is this shit? omg I love it

Finger-width tubes, of which the best is rigatoni and the worst is penne

Gnocchi starts great but by the end you feel like a potato

Cannelloni, I've only ever had it stuffed with cheese and that's a lot of fucking cheese

Macaroni (mac + cheese is its own delicious thing but isn't really "pasta")

Ziti (I'm sure you can do this other ways besides "baked" but come on, make a lasagna)

Shells (you're not even trying)

Angel hair / capellini (nobody orders this)

Fusilli (never cooked right, messy, stupid)

Rigati (you know what's tasty? rice)

Any Londoners had a pasta at Terroni - worth the ~ 8 quid?

don't wanna be That Guy but have had amazing bowls of pasta with just cheese and black pepper and butter in puglia that was criminally cheap and the most delicious i've ever eaten. But have also spent $$$ in pricey (but great) NYC restos and not regretted it really. I said $20, but that's just going by the UK, where I live.

otm

but let me be real I would possibly drop phat cash for a pheasant ravioli so thread has shook me

and I checked exchange rates since and want to up my answer to $30

A fowl tasting dish

I had an amazing cacio e pepe dish last night for $14 but that's NYC for you

have lately become addicted to making taleggio, cream, mozz and black pepper pizza in Roberta's cookbook that's a tribute to cacao e pepe, it is all of the delicious

v few ppl will get value out of a pasta machine, it's an illustration of the follies of modern individual living situations/property imo, I'd happily own 1/12th of one w/ my pals

I went for $30 on the basis of a swish one off main course, if we're getting it italian style as one course among many I'm either getting it cheap or someone else is paying

http://i.imgur.com/u90bEmS.png

The most expensive pasta dish I could find at Olive Garden's website

Linguine, which ranks slightly below spaghetti because it's just slightly less exciting

lies

I'd probably pay a lot if it was something exceptional. I really love pasta. My dad paid something insane like 75 euros for truffle shavings on a pasta dish in Italy and said it was worth every cent. idk. I come from a family of chefs. I wouldn't do it every day but I'm willing to fork out some cash for something truly amazing.

There was a place in London called Pollo (somewhere in Soho maybe on old compton) that we would go to after shows that was dirt cheap and pretty great for the prices though I was mostly drunk when there so it might have been terrible for all I know.

Now I really want pasta. Damn you, Dayo.

"Papardelle, I don't know the diff between this and tagliatelle but these are my first choice when it's time for pasta"

mine too!'

For non long pasta my favorite is orecchiette.

There was a place in London's West End called the Centrale that did absolutely incredible simple pasta for something like £4 or £5 a head. A teacher took my scholarship group there on an outing, and I ate two whole chillis in an act of, how you say, braggadocio. The restaurant was notable for sheltering and feeding the homeless without comment - with tacit enthusiasm, even.

Of course, it didn't stay in business. I feel lucky to have caught the tail-end of what was clearly a long and doomed glory.

I think Pollo is gone now. I always preferred Presto, which was just up the street, and used to have Derek Jarman as a regular customer BITD. They're both gone now, but they were both dirt cheap and really, really great.

God, I can get so sad thinking about Presto and how it's not there anymore. They did the most amazing sauté potatoes and chicken valdostana.

http://www.classiccafes.co.uk/prestospecial.htm

http://www.classiccafes.co.uk/pollo_special.htm

^^^ my hauntography

The area bounded by the four Circuses (St Giles, Oxford, Piccadilly, Cambridge) is rapidly becoming just another standard-issue British city centre: a dreck strip reeking of piss, blighted by St*rbucks, and heaving with feral packs of drunks.

A lousy pulsing puke puddle at the heart of the third-world capital of Europe.

ok I like this website, despite a certain lack of subtlety

it's a myth that fresh pasta is better imo, it's too mushy, you lose that al dente texture

also, i would probably only pay like $15 myself, still seems excessive since we cook pasta all the time at home. my in-laws go out to fancy Italian places a lot and since they're paying, I don't think much about the price

'third-world capital' needs explaining maybe but it's right about the market forces flattening the centre into a streamlined cash extraction engine

I sometimes wish that someone who really knew pasta would take and feed me pasta so that I understood what people got so amazed about. Because I'm amazed that people can get so effusive about something I effectively consider to be gooey slop. And I am quite ready to be convinced that the fault is in me, not in pasta as a foodstuff.

ha Stevie - I definitely ate at Pollo with Jenny J :)

Re: fresh pasta, there was a Jamie Oliver-inspired "fresh pasta is great!" and then a "al dente is better" kick-back but I maintain that fresh pasta, when boiled properly (barely) and dusted with breadcrumbs is superior to even the most perfect spaghetti

it's a myth that fresh pasta is better imo, it's too mushy, you lose that al dente texture

Noodles that really benefit from being fresh are Chinese noodles

Not surprising though that an Italian xerox of a Chinese invention loses something in translation and only benefits after going through a process bearing remarkable similarity to the production of particle board

Oops, did I just give away my position here

Hmmm. Which actually makes me realise something, which is that I will totally and happily seek out noodles in Chinese food, Japanese food, Thai food, East Asian fusion kinda food and eat them with relish. And I don't know if it's the "kind of preparation" involved with Asian as opposed to European noodle cooking. Or if I just don't like "Italian" (i.e. a particular British 70s interpretation thereof) food.

I think the Italians win the noodle battle (but Chinese cuisine wins the war because rice is better than any noodle)

Think there are plenty of Chinese who would disagree with you on rice being better than the noodle

But that was very much swayed by the term "bowl of pasta" while if you said "bowl of noodles" I'd pay £20-£25 (well, I would, if I had a job and ate out regularly again) for really well prepared vegetarian noodle dishes? That's odd, and I hadn't thought about that.

EastAsian fusion w/ relish, huh. the brits really have a panache when it comes to culinary crime xxxp

I bet, ENBB - did she ever take you to the glorious cheap pizza place Lorelei? That closed last year :((((

I mean, if you added "rice noodles" to the mix, like, rice is my favourite carbohydrate and you adding the amazing of rice to noodles, which is the best thing ever, obviously.

Ha! You making a pun. I meant, "eat with delight" but also, if we're talking about this odd place my friend and I always go to (near the British Museum?), well I could mean "relish" in the bowls of pickled condiments of obscure origin which are amazing on noodles.

pasta is one of the most efficient means of getting parmesan into my system and that's why i love it

Dayo where do you stand on rice vs. noodle

Hm I don't know the national origin of soba noodles but I would walk two hours for soba, and def prefer it to 90% of Italian pastas

In the end, with rice but is a very hard decision to make

I would have gone with noodles, no question, until I ate all the rice in Taiwan. Still a very hard decision and so I'm just gonna refuse to take a stan(d).

Choosing rice in the land of beef noodles, interesting

Rice is the greatest starch that exists

Not surprising though that an Italian xerox of a Chinese invention loses something in translation and only benefits after going through a process bearing remarkable similarity to the production of particle board

i know that noodles originated from china but to call modern-day italian pasta a "xerox" of chinese noodles is bullshit. there have been a huge number of agricultural and culinary exchanges in the past 500 years in most cases various cultures have adapted foreign ingredients and incorporated them into their own cuisines. i love traditional mexican food but i'm never going to say that other countries using chilis or tomatoes are a sad "xerox". it's one ingredient. similarly peruvian lomo saltado may be an approximation of chinese stir fries but it transcends mere approximation and becomes something else entirely.

$20, maybe. $30+ for a meal is like a once a year expenditure, and I'm not gonna spend it on pasta.

$25, but it'd have to be some pretty damn good pasta with a non-humiliating portion size.

Paying for pasta? I'm perfectly capable of boiling water at home, thanks.

get bent otm

non-humiliating portion size is key

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

i was just talking to my wife and there's a specific pasta dish we've ordered and would order again and i just checked and it costs $34 :/

with a non-humiliating portion size.

fucking otm. this so common. you are doing eating in about 7 minutes because there is basically no food on your plate

you are doingdone eating

That is otm, but I'd probably finish any portion of lasagna in about 7 minutes. So I just don't order it anymore.

It takes at least 7 minutes for lasagne to cool down enough for me to start eating.

I read it in the opposite way, i.e. portion sizes are usually so huge that I feel humiliated for not even finishing half the plate before asking for a doggie bag

It can go either way. This place is the worst in that the portion sizes are over the top, and the dishes are all just pasta+sauce+meat variants. It's difficult to see in the photos due to the lighting, but there are shark and animatronic Italian chef decorations inside.

You also have the option to drink wine from a self-service container.

now you're talking

my bf and i went out for an anniversary dinner once at an upscale but "rustic" place in santa monica. his burger and my pasta were both around $16 -- he got a restaurant-size burger (5-6 oz. beef) with fixings and fries, while i got six pieces of mezzaluna and a spoonful of sauce. i realize a lot of labor goes into fresh pasta, but the ingredients are sooooo cheap.

they didn't even differentiate on the menu that the pasta was meant to be ordered as a separate course and not a main. if i had known, i would have gone with a better value.

yeah, I always steer clear of ravioli type stuff because of this

I grew up with a REAL relative from Italy who lived nearby, and who cooked pasta and other dishes from scratch...we'd eat at her place at least once a month or so. I'd pay $100's to eat that again. Her sauce recipe was passed on to my mom, whose sauce is also great, but nowhere near as good.

Found an $8 over-the-counter imported sauce that tastes almost as good as mom's. I'm picky so I wouldn't pay less than $40 when eating out - otherwise, it's not "pasta" to me.

the times i've made pasta from scratch i could never get it thin enough, so i have crazy respect for the people with enough patience and skill to do that.

still trying to figure out if complaining about paying for homemade pasta is gauche

head is spinning at "never ending pasta bowl" with "limited time". make your fucking mind up!

restaurant pasta never seems to be much better, if at all better, than we make at home. $15 i guess but I've been disappointed so many times - even in Italy - that I wouldn't bother.

shit i made tonight was def worth $28 fwiw

take it to the TMI thread, weirdo

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2014/09/07/olive-garden-never-ending-pasta-casual-dining-restaurants/15139803/

http://i.imgur.com/N4HDaf7.png

But Spenchian says this Olive Garden promotion isn't about gorging but about fun. "We're trying to make our fans feel like VIPs," he says. That's one reason that up to seven guests who eat with the pass-holder will receive freebie Coca-Cola branded drinks, he says.