Every Single Pasta I Ate In Italy

Holy hell. That's a lot of pasta.

Rome

The first night in Italy – paccheri with mozzarella with cheese from Obica. I was a walking zombie after travelling for 24 hours straight so I think it was good but I can't remember anything.

The cacio e pepe from Roma Sparita is their signature dish. It was, to put it simply, incredible. Anthony Bourdain went here (and didn't give the name of this place so we did some sleuthing) has never let us down. Oh, and the guy on the left? A simple spaghetti with anchovies. Delicious.

One of the best pastas of the trip. Bottarga and clam pasta from Osteria Le Mani in Pasta. An almost accidental find, and a good one at that.

Also from Le Mani in Pasta, malloreddus with seafood. Looking back on this, I am wondering if this restaurant was a bit Sardinian?

A bit of a fail when it came to restaurant organisation. We didn't book anything for our last night and wandered the streets hungry and ended up at this touristy restaurant near our hotel. Osteria Da Fortunata had these cute women in the window making pasta but it was all a bit meh. Maybe because it felt like a tourist trap? The food was fine but I'm not here for fine.

This guy here is carbonara, something I'd been wanting to eat in Rome.

Gnocchi with ragu.

Pancetta with zucchini flowers.

Amalfi Coast

After eating pizza and only pizza in Napoli, my body needed a break. However, we decided to celebrate our first night in Praiano with dinner with a view at Kasai. A not-so-memorable pasta, this had pumpkin and something something and I'm sure it was good but I really can't remember what else was going on with it.

Waiting in Sorrento for our ferry to Capri, we ordered two surprisingly delicious pastas from a port-side tourist spot. 

Capri

Good lord this is an ugly beast. This place (La Taberna degli Amici) was really cute with a super sweet owner. We ordered a pappardelle with rabbit and wasn't disappointed, even though it isn't particularly photogenic.

Sardinia

We got to Cagliari in Sardinia fairly late at night and fortunately this spot was open serving up Sardinian-style fast food. This was from MeC Puddu's and was my first time trying culingionis – a cheese filled ravioli. Cheesy, carby, good.

Lunch at an agriturismo. There's boar in there. 

More malloreddus from a little take out joint (Pizzeria Zio Pedrillo) in Cala Gonone. 

And a seafood pasta. Nothing fancy but it was cheap and fresh.

This seafood restaurant (Il Portico) in Nuoro was pretty epic. There was so much food, I was almost wishing vomitoriums were a thing. One is a swordfish pasta and the other looks simple but was sea urchin and bottarga. It was rich, intense and I loved it.

Emilia-Romagna

There have been a few times when I've nearly teared up with shear happiness. This was one of those times. Sure, this place (Gallo d'Oro) was packed out with tourists and probably wasn't the best food I've ever eaten, but it was the fact that I had arrived in my food paradise – Parma – with everything I love in one glorious place. Ravioli, prosciutto, lambrusco and parmesan cheese. I was so happy.

Old school Italian dining at La Greppia. Pancetta with asparagus. Good. Very good.

Classic ravioli with balsamic vinegar. Simple but amazing.

Another Anthony Bourdain adventure. We went to a balsamic vinegar producer and had a multi-course lunch complete with two kinds of pasta. This was tortelli filled with ricotta and drizzled with 12 year old balsamic.

Farfalle with ragu. Yum. 

Another classic dish in Emilia-Romagna: agnolotti in broth. We got this from a fairly cool looking restaurant called Degusteria in Parma. It was comforting like a bowl of noodle soup. 

More ravioli! I honestly don't get sick of it. 

Yes, more ravioli. After our culatello tour we had lunch upstairs at the restaurant. It was one of the best meals we had in Italy.  

We stayed at an agriturismo just outside Modena and their own restaurant was one of the highlights for us in Italy. Just a simple gramigna pasta with sausage ragu.

More tortelli with the restaurant's own balsamic.

I have this weird thing that I like to do. I like to eat/drink things in places something is named after. For example, Bordeaux in Bordeaux, Florentine steak in Florence, Champagne in Champagne (not yet done) and now, bolognese in Bologna. Success, guys. Here it is. A home made bolognese from a little restaurant called Al Sangiovese.

What was even better was their lasagne. An unattractive fellow, but highly delicious.

Florence

You really miss cooking when you're away for long periods of time. Not only is eating out pretty indulgent, it's also expensive and most probably fatty. Soooo, when we had a great kitchen in our Airbnb in Florence, we pretty much cooked every day.

This one wasn't spectacular (we just got the ingredients from the local supermarket) – just some fresh tagliatelle with what we thought was a ragu but ended up being Pappa Al Pomodoro which is a thick Tuscan tomato and bread soup. Every single dead Tuscan would be rolling around in their graves at this. Sorry guys.

Okay, this one was wayyyyy better. We went to the food markets and got us some super fresh tagliatelle, too many tomatoes, pancetta, and some basil and made this guy. I was pretty pleased with the whole thing.

And then we're back to semi-sad dinners. We branched out and used pappardelle but it wasn't a great success. I mean, it was still great and I would eat it if it were in front of me right now, but it wasn't like the one above.

Chianti

We actually didn't eat amazingly well in Chianti. I think it was a mix of budget (or lack thereof), disorganisation on our part and being a wee bit tired from all the wine tasting. We got this ravioli with ragu at a roadside bar on the way to a tour.

Montepulciano

I've done some good things with pasta and I have done some bad things with pasta. This falls into the latter. We found some wild hare ragu in a jar at the mini mart so tried it out with some ravioli. It wasn't great. The ragu was super intense and didn't go with the ravioli at all. Sorry Italy, I'll do better.

Just keeping it simple for lunch. Tagliatelle with cherry tomatoes and fresh picked basil. It's fresh picked because the only way you could buy basil from the supermarket was in a pot. I was into it.

And to end our carb-filled time in Italy – one of the best pastas of the trip. Tagliatelle with a crap tonne of truffles. Oh god it was good. I'm literally salivating while writing this sentence. This was from our B&B in Montepulciano and had a whole truffle menu because it was fortunately truffle season for us. 

And that's it. Every single pasta we consumed during our time in Italy. If you see us in the next few months looking a little soft around the edges, this is why.

But you know what? It was worth it. 

And I'd do it again.