Maximum price you would pay for a bowl of pasta

"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.

300 posts by midnight gmt

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

no way am i reading this whole thread but i have no idea what terrible pasta experiences have led you to believe that this is true

eh, my in-laws are sicilian and they all pretty much agree with me. not saying fresh pasta is bad by any means, just that it's not necessarily better. i think there are some exceptions with certain pasta types (e.g. various stuffed pastas) but generally i think it's a myth that fresh is better. it's often inconsistent and unreliable.

will agree w/ 龜 xp that chinese noodles may benefit more by being fresh

I guess this is where I feel slightly ashamed that my tongue in cheek post reeled another poster in by the cheek entirely

$20 if it's incredible pasta but $15 seems reasonable for a nice restaurant

well sure nothing would be necessarily better if it wasn't made right or cooked right, but it's like very easy to make and cook delicious al dente fresh pasta

i just think fresh pasta tastes better.

btw i agree w/lamp, $25 is fine at a good restaurant

my answer to this question is that 99% of the time if i'm in an Italian restaurant I would choose pizza.

$15 but I've spent more. Tempted to say I should only spend >$15 in the small cities I've lived. Mid grade Italian restaurant food is the worst, but there seems to be a $$ threshold around here where it becomes a completely different thing.

I have an irrational thing against ordering pasta in restaurants because it feels somehow like an overly marked up item, which is silly because all food in restaurants is overly marked up.

we have one of those imperia pasta machines & you get really good pasta but it must not be worth the bother since it's been like a decade since we used it

voted $15 but that would only be in exceptional circumstances, great pasta's too easy to make at home to spring for it when out imo

It needs to have some rabbit ragu or some other special ingredient for me to pay mor than 16 or so.

I'm more happy paying $15+ if it's stuffed pasta or gnocchi, something besides what (even at good places) comes in a box

but some really wonderful things come in boxes

*gets down on one knee*

*restaurant goes silent*
*olive garden waitstaff gather*

*I think, 'thank god the chicken con broccoli was perfect tonight'*

there was a multicenturion thread about olive garden wasn't there

it does make me wonder if america wreaks the same godforsaken horrors upon 'pasta' that it does on 'pizza' but tbh the former is probably much more difficult

now i've lobbed that grenade, i'm going to run out amidst your zings

I just want to know why they only made the least significant word Italian in 'chicken con broccoli'

*calls over shoulder* it's not italian

Broccoli is an Italian word

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.