One restaurant in Silicon Valley has one of the most incredible and unique ways to serve pasta.
La Pizza e La Pasta, which is located inside Eataly, the Italian food emporium, at the Westfield Mall in San Jose, California, makes some incredible pasta and pizza dishes. It’s one of my favorite Italian places in the Bay Area.
I would really single them out for one dish, though. It’s essentially Fettuccine Alfredo, but made with extremely fancy, special ingredients like white truffle essence.
But the ingredients are really only part of the story. The most incredible thing about this is the way that the restaurant serves it.
When you order the dish, a person comes to your table with a giant wheel of Parmesan Reggiano cheese. In case you’re not up to speed on cheeses, real Parmesan is a name-controlled cheese from Italy. It can only be made in a specific region. It’s sold in massive wheels that are almost 2 feet high.
Once they’ve brought the wheel of cheese to your table, the server takes freshly prepared pasta, and using two spoons, carefully rolls it through a hollowed-out groove in the top of the cheese. They spin the pasta against the massive wheel; a bit of the Parmesan melts and mixes in.
The result is incredibly creamy, delicious fettuccine noodles coated in a thin layer of fresh Parmesan.
It’s a tableside performance in addition to a very tasty lunch or dinner. The process of rolling the pasta on the massive cheese wheel takes about a minute, so there’s plenty of time to snap a photo or marvel at this dish with your fellow diners.
The process is super fun for kids and it’s a neat surprise if you’re taking someone there on a date.
Again, though, it’s not just about the performance. The pasta and everything else there are excellent!
Performative pasta isn’t just a Silicon Valley gimmick either. Twirling and spinning noodles is a staple of traditional Chinese hot pot restaurants, which are common in Silicon Valley, especially in nearby towns like San Mateo, California.
We love this element of tableside performance. It’s always great to have your entertainment and eat it too!
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