Unsurprisingly, a large chunk of this section was dedicated to dried pasta -- this was just one of several aisles of it. I looked to see if there were any brands I recognized, but no -- the brands sold in the US as upscale Italian pasta are generally the ones that you would find at a lower-end supermarket in Italy itself, and Eataly is much too fancy for that sort of stuff.
Here in the US, the cheap pasta comes in clear plastic bags and the expensive stuff, or Barilla at least, comes in cardboard boxes. Sometimes the store brands, Signature Select certainly comes to mind, tries to be fancy with cardboard boxes! I suppose in Italy, the really good stuff comes in bags, but fancier bags than the cheap stuff here. It is hard to make sense of all of this! Oh well, for my tastes, the cheap pasta in plastic bags or the Signature Select stuff is good enough, lol.
ReplyDeleteHmm, interesting -- almost all of the store-brand pasta I buy comes in boxes! The only exception is Trader Joe's, and that's theoretically fancier (Italian-made) pasta compared to what the other stores sell. Safeway, Kroger, Target, and even Walmart (the only pasta I've ever found that I decided wasn't good enough!) all come in boxes. The only fancier pasta I ever buy is Garafalo brand (from Costco), and that comes in cheap clear plastic bags similar to Trader Joe's, but like I mentioned, that's apparently not fancy enough for Eataly!
DeleteI'd love this section! While I'm not much of a cook, I make pasta quite often as it's one of my favorites. When I go to some of the more unusual supermarkets on my retail road trips I like to go through the pasta aisles and track down some of the more unusual pasta shapes and brands to bring home with me for a change. I'm sure in Italy I'd be more mind-boggled by the selection of pastas compared to what some of random specialty grocers around here have to offer!
ReplyDeleteIf I hadn't been already bringing home a lot of other food, I probably would have brought home some pasta for myself! Probably from a normal grocery store, though -- Eataly's prices are (unsurprisingly) quite a bit more than I'd be willing to pay even for fancy pasta!
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