The Definitive Guide to the Best Pasta in Italy

Putting together a guide to the best pasta in Italy is something of a fool’s errand. Pasta is such a broad church in terms of flavors and textures, from the hearty ragù of Bologna to the light, lemon-sharp bowlfuls of the Amalfi.

Like a music festival, consider this selection of iconic pasta dishes as the headline acts. However, you should always be on the lookout for that unexpected Next Big Thing. In the meantime, prepare to read up an appetite with this guide to the best pasta in Italy.

Tagliatelle al Ragù

Tagliatelle al ragù

One of the most iconic of Italy’s pasta dishes, Tagliatelle al Ragù hails from the country’s unofficial food capital of Bologna.

This rich, slow-cooked sauce—which fuses the flavors of minced beef, pancetta, and wine— owes a great debt to the French ragoût. The cooks of Bologna adapted and enriched this meaty stew recipe, paving the way for its eventual global domination as ragù.

Tagliatelle al ragù

However, in Bologna, this comfort-food classic is always eaten with coiled ribbons of egg tagliatelle rather than spaghetti. Tagliatelle has the surface area that’s ideal for retaining the sauce as it’s wound greedily onto your fork.

If you still doubt how seriously the Italians take this kind of thing, visit Bologna’s Chamber of Commerce. There you’ll find the exact dimensions of the tagliatelle noodle enshrined in gold plate.

Gnocchi alla Sorrentina

Gnocchi alla Sorrentina

Gnocchi, those filling potato-and-flour dollops, are generally considered to be pasta by Italians and are typically served as primi piatti, before the main course.

Believed to have evolved from Middle Eastern dumplings, these pillowy parcels of dough are eaten throughout Italy. Gnocchi alla Sorrentina is one of the more high-profile gnocchi recipes, with the recipe foregrounding the comfort food aspect of this stubby pasta hybrid.

Often served on a Sunday in the Sorrentine peninsula, this Italian dish has the gnocchi baked into a gooey mix with a sauce of stretchy mozzarella and other cheeses, sweet crushed tomatoes, and fresh basil.

Pasta al Limone

Pasta al limone

A dish of southern Italian sunshine, pasta al limone has been showcasing the fulsome citrus of the Sorrentine peninsula as far back as the Renaissance era.

A delightfully refreshing and simple dish to prepare, it involves coating linguine or a similar long pasta in a sauce of lemon zest, lemon juice, and butter. It’s at its best when eaten on the Amalfi Coast with views of the cliffs plunging into the turquoise Tyrrhenian.

You’ll find variations of this classic throughout Italy. The Sicilian version includes mint and anchovies, indicative of the Arabic kitchen’s influence in Italy’s most southerly region. But whichever version you enjoy, it’ll taste of the dynamic simplicity that represents the best of Mediterranean cooking.

Spaghetti alle Vongole

Spaghetti alle vongole

A staple of the Italian coastline and frequently served on tables planted in the sand, Spaghetti alle Vongole is essentially pasta with clams.

This 18th-century recipe has slightly more to it than just that duo of ingredients: some oil, garlic, white wine, parsley, and a zing of chilli flakes go in as well. Originally from Naples, you’ll find this distinctive dish on any menu close to sea spray and chilled white wine.

Despite it being the best pasta in Italy to eat in the summer, it’s also often served on Christmas Eve as part of the traditional “Feast of Seven Fishes.”

Spaghetti alla Puttanesca

Spaghetti alla puttanesca

With a history as murky as the name, Spaghetti alla Puttanesca is a robust bowlful of anchovies, capers, black olives, chili flakes, and cherry tomatoes.

A Neapolitan dish, this is often thought of as a spaghettata di mezzanotte or “midnight spaghetti”—a good dish to throw together when you return hungry after a night on the town. Its ease of preparation is what many believe has led to its strange moniker, translated as “spaghetti in the style of the prostitutes.”

The name is maybe just clever branding by an Ischian restaurateur, or there’s the school of thought that the dish was inspired by the hastily thrown-together meals that busy Neapolitan prostitutes would make. Whatever the truth, remember that this is a fish-based dish, so leave the cheese alone. Instead, sprinkle over some parsley to cut through the richness.

Fregola ai Frutti

Fregola ai frutti

Fregola ai Frutti is a memorable seafood-based Sardinian dish—the culinary marriage of the island’s African-influenced past with the abundance of its coastal waters.

Fregola are pasta balls, mini spheres created from rolled semolina dough. The history of these Sardinian pasta staples—or crunchy, buoyant additions to Sardinian soups—dates to the Middle Ages and the Arab traders who would sail to Cagliari with their holds brimming with the flavors of North Africa.

The fregola, cooked in fish broth, marries beautifully with the textures of the sautéed seafood, usually a mix of shellfish, shrimp, and squid.

Busiate alla Trapanese

Busiate alla Trapanese

Those who consider Pesto alla Genovese—that supermarket staple of basil, pine nuts, and Parmigiano Reggiano—the world’s only pesto worth caring about clearly haven’t tried pesto alla Trapanese, a popular Sicilian dish.

This Sicilian spin on the Ligurian classic owes a debt to Genoa—it’s believed to have evolved in the port of Trapani after being introduced by Genoese sailors. The Sicilian version adds tomatoes, swaps in almonds for the pine nuts, and eschews the Parmigiano Reggiano completely.

The result is a fresh and delicious sauce, best mixed in with the local busiate pasta of Trapani. The busiate’s coiled appearance was traditionally created by twisting the pasta dough around a stick—a technique that has persisted for over 1,000 years.

Pasta alla Norma

Pasta alla Norma

Core flavors of the Sicilian pantry in a single dish, Pasta alla Norma is so delicious that it’s well known in much of the western hemisphere.

It’s named for a Bellini opera, the idea being that both the opera and the 19th-century pasta dish have achieved a similar degree of artistic perfection. Created by an inspired chef working among the lava stone lanes of Catania, it’s a blend of salty ricotta salata, fried eggplant, basil, and sweet tomato sauce.

While Pasta alla Norma is common in places like the US and Europe, when made with local ingredients in Catania—and with a dash of fiery Sicilian pride—it’s a truly distinctive culinary experience.

Cacio e Pepe

Cacio e pepe

One of the four pillars of Rome’s pasta universe, Cacio e Pepe is also the simplest of the four pasta dishes to prepare. Its concise ingredient list includes sharp and salty pecorino romanocheese, plenty of freshly ground pepper, a splash of pasta water, and spaghetti.

There’s evidence that this enduring favorite originated in the Roman era. With the plentiful sheep’s cheese that the recipe employs, cacio e pepe has also long been regarded as a shepherds’ recipe, with ready access to sheep’s milk products one of their key career perks.

Today, it’s a favorite of impoverished Roman students, rolling home after a night in Monti’s art bars and with only the bare essentials in their cupboards from which to conjure gastronomic magic.

Carbonara

Carbonara

One of Italy’s longstanding culinary disputes with the world at large is how the carbonara recipe has been lazily augmented with cream.

True Roman carbonara is light and glossy, the pasta slick with pecorino romano and speckled with delicious cubes of guanciale, or pork jowl. With pork jowl not typically on supermarket shelves in most northern European countries, this creates an opening for another careless insult to carbonara, with the jowl replaced by fatty bacon.

Carbonara

The Romans also argue among themselves as to which is the right pasta shape for this dish—rigatoni or spaghetti. But to taste carbonara on a warm evening in Rome—with no cream and chunks of crisp guanciale—is simply magical.

Whether you choose to bring up the opinion that carbonara was first concocted from US rations after WWII—so, yes: bacon—is entirely up to you and your capacity for abuse in a foreign language.

Trofie al Pesto

Trofie al pesto

Some of the best pasta in Italy is found in the country’s north, as well as some of the best sauces, often butter-based. Pesto genovese, from the north-west region of Liguria, has risen to be one of the country’s most famous, and rightly so.

Hailing from Genoa, this mashed concoction of basil, pine nuts, garlic, olive oil, and Parmigiano Reggiano, plus a little pecorino imbues any pasta or potato dish with a vivid hit of the Italian Riviera.

Pesto

A medieval condiment before it evolved into a full-blown sauce, pesto’s dancing partner is trofie—a simple, short pasta strand made in the traditional manner by rolling balls of dough beneath the palm. Trofie’s origins stretch back even earlier than pesto, to the 11th century and the time of the Crusades.

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Tortellini in Brodo

Tortellini in brodo

Part soup, part pasta dish, Tortellini in Brodo is one of the most soulful primi piatti in the Italian culinary pantheon.

Small parcels of mortadella and Parmigiano Reggiano bob in a rich beef broth that’s been simmered low and slow with root vegetables. The flavor is deep and delicious, while its ingredients are iconic staples of the Bolognese kitchen.

This so-called “king of soups” is often the first course for Christmas dinner in the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy. The family members all chip in and help Nonna fashion the painstaking tortellini parcels, famously meant to resemble the navel of the Roman goddess, Venus.

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