The jewel in the crown that is mediterranean food, Italian cuisine is characterised by flavour, resourcefulness and carbs. As a country which has brought us some incredible bread products - think pizza, focaccia and bruschetta - it is in danger of being typecast.
However, there is far more to Italian food than this. So with that in mind, I visited Diciannove in London’s Blackfriars. Located in the Crowne Plaza hotel, Diciannove enjoys a sophisticated setting. Inside, wooden flooring and leather furnishings give a sense of elegance while yellow details and a large, wooden chandelier suggest a more playful side to the restaurant.
The menu features a separate column explaining which of the 20 regions of Italy the dish comes from. Rather than aim for a carb free-meal, I thought I would at least try a famously flour-focussed dish to start (when in Rome, after all). The spaghettini with fresh crab, chilli, garlic and parsley originates from Liguria - the northwest coast which curves round towards Monaco. A small portion with mild flavours, it made for a great antipasti.
Across the table: Puglia’s finest - the burrata. Geographically speaking, Puglia is the heel of the boot of Italy. A four day walk from Rome, this region was once considered uncultured compared to the north. However, it’s from here that burrata cheese originates. Made with mozzarella and cream, it sat atop aubergine with tomato coulis, alongside carasau bread chips. Soft, light and almost fluffy, it went well with the more rubbery texture and earthen flavours of the aubergine.
Approximately 80 per cent of Italy’s border is coast, so it’s no surprise that they know a thing or two about fish. With this in mind, I ordered the sea bream with sauteed asparagus, shallot butter and basil sauce. The dish is from Veneto - the northeastern corner of Italy which of course plays host to the famously aquatic city of Venice. The shallot and basil flavours could perhaps have been stronger but the fish was nicely cooked, as was the asparagus.
Sticking with the theme, my guest went for the pan-fried lemon sole with broad beans, pecorino sauce and steamed green beans. It was less flaky than the sea bream but boasted a creamy sauce and beautifully crispy skin. Again, this dish is from Puglia in the south.
To finish, we shared a deliciously soft and spongy tiramisu which, like the sea bream in basil sauce, is from the Veneto region. Two starters, two mains, five drinks and a dessert cost £140 ($190). While perhaps lacking a certain wow factor, Diciannove had certainly shown that there’s more to Italian food than carbs.
An Italian tradition that has gone on to dominate the world, pasta is arguably the ultimate comfort dish. Ribbons of soft, springy dough are the perfect accompaniment to all sorts of meats, veggies and sauces, making pasta one of the world’s most flexible ingredients. Though pasta is traditionally served as a small dish in its native Italy, such is its versatility that some plates around the world have become synonymous with excess. These different recipes vary in size, in price and ingredients, but all are enormously over the top. Here is our list of the world’s most decadent pasta dishes.
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1. Tajarin
We begin with a dish that may not be the biggest, but still punches well above its weight. Unlike other restaurant specific recipes, tajarin is a regional specialty from Piedmont in Northern Italy. The thin noodles are made with roughly three times the egg yolk of normal pasta, making them exceptionally rich. These are then topped with butter, handfuls of parmigiano reggiano and shavings of fresh white truffle, which can sell for $2,000 a pound. It may look humble, but this tradition is a definite decadence.
Few weekday staples can claim to be as indulgent as a good mac and cheese. A dish built on layers of carb, this recipe is the ultimate stodgy treat. While there are literally thousands of variations on the traditional recipe, the most decadent has to be the Fat Mac Challenge at Fat Cat restaurant in Quincy, Massachusetts. This gargantuan undertaking weighs in at over 6lbs and contains manchego, parmesan, cheddar, blue cheese, lobster, steak, crab, shrimp, chicken and hot dogs. Anyone who successfully completes a plateful is rewarded with a T-shirt - presumably extra large.
Pasta and cheese were born for each other. While convention dictates that cheese be either grated on top or mixed into a sauce, a number of restaurants around the world have come up with a way of taking cheesy pasta to the next level. Cheese wheel pasta is made by twirling freshly cooked spaghetti in the middle of a block of Grana Padano. As more and more hot pasta is gradually added to melt more cheese, the flavours mix and become incredibly decadent and complex. Not only does it look spectacular, but this dish is possibly the cheesiest plate of pasta you could ever wish to find.
Since pasta is so flexible, it’s difficult to get a grasp on how one decadent dish can stack against another. Fortunately, a report by Center for Science in the Public Interest has revealed one particular pasta plate that blows competitors completely out of the water.
Cheesecake Factory’s Pasta Napoletana is a deceptively small bowl of pure indulgence. Tipping the scales at a colossal 2,300 calories, the recipe features spaghetti tossed in a parmesan cream sauce and meat ragout featuring pepperoni, bacon, sausage and meatballs. With more than two days’ worth of salt in a single portion, diners are advised to save this dish for special occasions.
While a host of high end restaurants have produced their own pricey plates of pasta, there is only one decadent bowl that can claim to be the most expensive. BiCE restaurant in New York has created a dish that will set customers back an eye-watering $2,000. Served on a gold plate designed by Gianni Versace and made from taglioni noodles, fresh Maine lobster and a whole heap of black truffles, the BiCE Bolognese is a ludicrously expensive plate that, if only by virtue of price, is undoubtedly one of the most decadent plates of any food money can buy.
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Pasta comes in all shapes and sizes. Popular all over the world, the sheer number of people experimenting with the comfort food classic makes it incredibly difficult to definitely say what might be the world’s most decadent. What we can say for certain is that these five dishes will be up there with the best of them.
What’s better than creamy, cheesy pasta dotted with bits of bacon? If that pasta has been turned into a nugget, covered in breadcrumbs and fried to a golden crisp. Obviously.
Finding genuinely original takes on both spaghetti and the deep fat fryer is surprisingly tricky, but one restaurant in California has come up with a clever way to bring the two together. Not content with a standard pasta bowl, Pollara Pizzeria in Berkely is serving crispy, gooey carbonara nuggets. You can start drooling now.
Christened “carbonara fritti”, after the Italian word for fried, the dish is the ultimate indulgent snack, combining everything you love about traditional carbonara in a bite-sized morsel. Creamy sauce, perfectly cooked noodles and salty pork balance perfectly with the crunchy coating, making the pieces as moreish as they are ingenious.
Rather than incorporating ordinary bacon, the dish is made using “guanciale” - a cured meat taken made from pork cheek. Guanciale is fattier than typical back bacon, giving a greater depth of flavour to the entire dish. Coupled with liberal quantities of pecorino cheese, it’s the best thing to come out of Berkley since Chris Pine.
Love Carbonara? You'll dore our amazing recipe for Chicken Carbonara-Loaded Fries:
Though the extremely Instagrammable nuggets are understandably stealing food headlines everywhere, they aren’t the only exciting thing on the menu at Pollara. As a specialist in “Roman street food”, according to its website, the restaurant also serves Pizza al Taglio - literally, “pizza by the cut” - which is famous for its rectangular shape and is sold by weight rather than diameter.
Pollara’s real USP is in its dough, which the restaurant explains further on its site. As they put it:
“The main thing that sets Pizza al Taglio apart from its pizza siblings other than the unique portioning is the dough, which is made with more water than most. Pollara’s dough is cold-fermented, meaning that you keep it in the fridge to rise.”
“The chilled temps slow down the yeast without halting the work of the enzymes that break down the gluten during fermentation, so more gluten proteins are broken down by the time the dough achieves the desired rise, yielding a less dense, more airy dough.”
Between this and the carbonara balls, it looks like a trip to California might be in order for fast food fans everywhere.
Twice a year on the Italian island of Sardinia, dutiful pilgrims make the 20 mile trek from the small city of Nuoro to the hallowed “Santuario di San Francesco”. Each May and October, the sanctuary hosts the “Feast of San Francesco”, an event that has become something of a mythological foodie Hajj. Travellers can number in the thousands. The reason for this congregation is singular - Nuoro is home to a very special pasta dish.
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Su filindeu, literally translated as the “threads of God”, is undoubtedly the rarest pasta in the world. For 300 years, female members of a single family have passed down the tradition, to the point today where there are only a handful of people capable of reproducing the recipe. Almost exclusively reserved for those who make the pilgrimage to “Santuario di San Francesco”, to sample su filindeu is a true labour of love.The master of the dish is 63 year old Paola Abriani. She has dedicated her life to perfecting the art of pasta making and remains as passionate about su filindeu as she was when she first began. Abriani rises at 7 AM every morning in order to perform the intricate ritual required to produce “threads of God”.
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The ingredients that go into the pasta are deceptively simple and straightforward to source - semolina durum wheat, water and salt. Similarly, the final serving of the dish is equally uncomplicated - pasta is paired with a strong mutton broth and a generous helping of local pecorino cheese. It is the technique that makes su filindeu near impossible to produce.To create the pasta, Abriani kneads the dough until it reaches the consistency of modelling clay. Once the desired texture has been reached, she works the dough into rounded strands, which she stretches and folds, doubling and redoubling over and over. After eight successive rounds of “layering”, Abriani is left with precisely 256 individual delicate strands, each about half the width of angel hair pasta.
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Carefully manoeuvring the strands, Abriani then lays the pasta over a wooden frame, criss-crossing three threaded layers over one another, creating a translucent pane of pasta. The su filindeu is then left to dry in the sun while Abriani starts the process all over again.According to Abriani, the real challenge of the dish is balancing the consistency of the dough. Should the semolina lack elasticity, she adds a touch of salted water. When it needs more moisture, a dab of separately prepared unsalted water is used. There is no science to this. As Abriani explains, the key is “understanding the dough with your hands”. It is small wonder that it is so challenging to reproduce.
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Over the years, many have tried to get to grips with the “threads of God”. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver spent several hours alongside Abriani, attempting to replicate the process. Representatives from the Barilla pasta making company worked to create a machine that could reproduce Abriani’s techniques. All failed spectacularly.Because of the challenge involved and the commitment required to learn the skill of su filindeu, there is a very real risk that the dish will fade away. Both of Abriani’s daughters lack their mother’s passion for the pasta and are understandably put-off by the prospect of a life dedicated to a singular pursuit. For any true pasta fan, therefore, a trip to Sardinia should be high on the agenda. With so few people capable of making it, “threads of God” could soon be a thing of the past.
Pickles really are the best thing since sliced bread - quite literally considering some restaurants are now replacing bread with pickles to make these mouthwatering sandwiches.
We've come a long way since the days when snacking on pickles was pretty much limited to eating them straight from the jar - along with the juice if you're a devoted enough fan of the brine-fermented snack.
Now, restaurants, cafes and even ice cream shops are jumping on the trend. In fact, Fabio's Gelato, a family-run dessert parlour in Hertfordshire, England, has started selling pickle sorbet and vanilla gelato - and they're sure to be a hit with customers.
This is how their pickle-flavoured gelato is made:
While mixing something sweet with something so intrinsically savoury might seem like a disaster waiting to happen, it turns out Fabio's Gelato has firsthand experience in the success of unconventional ice cream flavours.
Fabio's Gelato has even made Guinness, Marmite and blue cheese flavoured ice-cream - and customers are loving the bizarre combinations.
"We are passionate about producing great tasting homemade artisan Gelato," the owners of Fabio's Gelato explain on their website. "With over 500 flavours to date, we just love experimenting and creating something new if you can think of it we can make it!"
"All of our Gelato is made in Hitchin using specialist machines as well as local ingredients where possible. To date, we have created over 500 ever-changing flavours of Gelato, Sorbets & Vegan Gelato.
Owners Fabio & Hannah fell in love with Gelato after a family holiday to Rome and decided to pursue their love of all things Gelato by attending a Gelato course at Reading University in 2013, this is when along with their dream, a lot of hard work and professional guidance Fabio's Gelato was born."
As someone who has never visited the USA, I am fascinated by the country. I'm drawn to the iconic landmarks, the unique history, and, most importantly, the amazing food. Taco Bell, Wendy's and Chick-Fil-A are the stuff of legends to me, and I long to experience the greasy goodness that only American fast food seems able to offer.
It seems that I'm not the only one either, as one Reddit thread revealed the foods that non-US folks are simply itching to taste...
1. Corndogs
I can safely say, hand-on-heart, that I don't have the slightest inkling what a corndog is. Is it just a hot dog on a stick? What exactly is corny about it? I've no idea, but I want it. Reddit user, 'chinuplad' feels the same, as they wrote: "I'm from Scotland and we have battered sausages aplenty from the chip shops, so I'd love to see how corndogs compare."
2. Sweet/savoury food
Where I'm from, a proper breakfast consists of eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, mushrooms and toast. Sometimes with tomatoes and black pudding, if you're in the mood for it. However, in the states, there seems to be some fascination with putting syrup on breakfast - and all over savoury foods for that matter. User 'd44nny' said they were most interested in "Chicken and waffles with maple syrup" as part of a sweet/savoury combo, adding: "[it] sounds so wrong but still I need to try this".
3. State fair food
"I want to go to an American state fair and eat everything in sight," wrote H3ll0KITTYBEC. I'm not even entirely sure what a state fair is, but I totally agree with this sentiment.
4. Biscuits and gravy
As someone from the UK, this sounds gross. For us, biscuits are cookies, and gravy is that brown stuff you pour over your roast dinner on a Sunday afternoon. 'NorthEasternGhost' seemed to think the same thing, saying, "I've seen pictures of it before... it's not at all what I imagine when I hear 'biscuits and gravy' and I want to know what that is supposed to taste like." After doing a bit of research, I realise it's more like some kind of scone with meat grease - and I want it immediately.
5. Pumpkin pie
My only experience with pumpkins is tearing their guts out to make a lantern at Halloween, so I'm curious to find out what they'd taste like as a dessert. 'DriftingCloud' was also keen to try the sweet treat, lamenting the fact that, "canned pumpkin is only imported from the US and hence expensive". Curse you, import duties.
6. Gumbo
This is something I've only ever heard mentioned in films, despite having a few good friends from North America. Various users on Reddit said they were eager to try the dish - especially the authentic stuff from Louisiana.
7. Grits
Again, this is something that gets lost in translation, as - to me - grit is the stuff you put on roads in winter to stop them icing over. Not tasty. However, user catusmi helpfully explained that it's actually "very similar to polenta". Tasty.
8. Bagels
Yes, bagels exist outside of the States. Yes, you can get them in pretty much any store that sells other kinds of bread. But do we have the variety the USA has? No way. As Long Islander 'pyth1100' explained: "I take quality bagels for granted far too often. A real egg bagel, toasted with veggie cream cheese, that's how you start the day." Great, now I'm drooling.
9. Beef jerky
"Beef jerky seems really interesting," wrote Calcifer1. This is something I have actually tried, and I have to say I was a little confused by the whole experiences. It's chewy, sort of sweet, and not really what I was expecting from cured meat. However, I can see why others would want to give it a go.
10. Literally everything
"Australian here," wrote user helpiamabanana. "I want to try everything in Walmart or Costco or whatever the hell it is." Um, can I be the first to say, SAME. American stores look like food heaven, and if I ever get the chance to visit, Walmart will be one of the first places I check out.
So, there you have it. Or don't have it. It all depends on where you're reading from, I guess.
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