The Best Pasta

Watching Saved by the Bell as a kid, I developed quite an affection for Kelly Kapowski, the head cheerleader at Bayside High. It was the first time I’d ever been so smitten; I’d never before seen a girl so beautiful, virtuous, and funny. I knew, as a starry-eyed eleven-year-old, that the girl I’d want to spend the rest of my life with would have to be just like her. Today, as a single twenty-six-year-old, it’s apparent that I might need to lower my standards. When the show went off the air in 1993, I was devastated, thinking I’d never again see a girl so flawless. Then one day, years later, while innocuously flipping channels, I saw Giada de Laurentiis, and it was like I was in fourth grade all over again. 

Giada, who hosts a show called Everyday Italian on the Food Network, is more than mere eye candy. She offers more sophisticated cuisine than than her counterpart Rachael Ray, and is a Kapowskian paragon of grace and gentility as a TV presence. (Ray, by contrast, barks out inanities like a pint-sized drill sergeant.) I’m confident Giada could host a show about dogfighting and make it seem like an elegant and refined pursuit. I’ve seen her make pasta from scratch so many times that I could probably make it in my sleep at this point, but had never actually tried it myself. So when I read that a downtown restaurant named PastaBAR had the best homemade pasta in Phoenix, I had to stop by.

I ordered the fettucini tagliatta, which was tossed with charred rib-eye, arugula, cherry tomatoes, roasted garlic, and topped with Parmesan shavings. It was aromatic, decadent, and delicious. Pasta can be difficult to present in a visually stimulating way, but the vibrant red and green colors in the meal made the dish pleasing to the palette in more ways than one. Speaking of visually stimulating, Giada would be proud.

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