Benito Mussolini—the father of fascism, a.k.a. "Il Duce"—had a vision for Italy's future, and that vision remarkably didn't include one of its greatest culinary birthrights. The same leader who promised to reform Italian culture was hell-bent on erasing pasta from its national identity. The mayor of Naples, a man of reason, would have no part of this plan, resisting the Futurists' agenda and reminding people that vermicelli with tomato sauce was a "food of the angels."   

Pasta, as we know, eventually won the battle, evolving into a global icon. And while it still carries with it a historical drama, pasta was largely celebrated for its supreme versatility thanks to its basic elements: flour, water, and often eggs; maybe a few tomatoes or fresh herbs. But in the hands of a master—mindful of how a sauce fundamentally clings to a pasta shape—those bare ingredients are transformed into something greater than the sum of their parts.

Chefs often speak about the process of pasta-making in reverential tones; after all, many careers in the kitchen have been solidified by the ability to execute perfect al dente spaghetti, and ambitious home cooks (looking at you, Aziz) see it as a rite of passage. "Like anything great or timeless, pasta is very simple, but when done well is unforgettable," says chef Bryce Shuman. 

Faced with limited ingredients, Italian immigrants who came to America began modifying their traditions, substituting familiar things like zucchini flowers for potatoes and tomatoes, both of which were accessible and cheap. While we rightfully exalt the virtues of fresh pasta, it was the influx of dry pasta shapes—extruded from machines following the Industrial Revolution—that conditioned America's love for it and allowed for its adaptability. The mass production of penne and spaghetti ensured that households could whip up a quick carb fest any day of the week. And like all great things with a blank-slate quality, pasta underwent the gradual process of regional interpretation, picking up unusual flourishes in the heart of southern barbecue territory, or getting remixed by Italian-Americans who had a spiritual connection to their motherland. 

Pasta's journey from rags to riches is one that Los Angeles pasta savant Evan Funke once described as romantic. "This art that's so highly thought of across the world is really born from necessity to feed your family in a creative way. How do I make this fun and interesting and delicious with the few ingredients I have?"

With the help of chefs who have plied their pasta craft, and writers who've eaten their way across the country, here we take stock of the memorable pasta dishes that shape America. 

Our panel:

• Tim Carman, James Beard Award-winning food columnist at The Washington Post (@timcarman)
• Jordana Rothman, food and drink writer, co-author of Tacos: Recipes and Provocations (@jordanarothman)
• Adrian Miller, author of Soul Food: The Surprising Story of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time (@soulfoodscholar)
• Russell Moore, chef at Camino (@caminooakland)
• Kat Kinsman, senior food and drinks editor at Extra Crispy (@kittenwithawhip)
• Edmund Tijerina, food and drink editor at the San Antonio Express-News (@etij)
• Josh Scherer, senior food writer at Los Angeles Magazine (@culinarybrodown)
• Foster Kamer, executive editor at Mental Floss (@weareyourfek)
• Chris Schonberger, editor-in-chief at First We Feast (@cschonberger)
• Kenji López-Alt, Managing Culinary Director at Serious Eats and creator of The Food Lab (@TheFoodLab)
• Ross Scarano, deputy editor at Complex Music (@rossscarano)
• Regan Hofmann, food writer, contributor at Punch (@regan_hofmann)
• Tim Cushman, chef at O Ya and Covina (@cheftimcushman)
• DJ Dieselboy, drum and bass DJ (@djdieselboy)
• Sam Hiersteiner, food writer (@samsgoodfeed)

Address and phone: 717 8th St SE, Washington, D.C. (202-580-8889)
Website: rosesluxury.com

Carman says: "For a dish with only five ingredients—chitarra pasta, butter, black pepper and two kinds of cheese—there are “a million ways” you can ruin a cacio e pepe, says Aaron Silverman, the James Beard Award-winning chef at Rose’s Luxury. Silverman can talk for an hour about the many ways a cook can fumble the preparation, which gives you an idea of how much R&D went into Washington’s best plate of pasta. The kitchen’s job is to conceal the complexity behind the humble dish: salting the pasta water just right; undercooking the noodles to leave enough starch to bind the butter; grinding the Tellicherry peppercorns coarsely enough so they don’t turn the sauce a gruesome shade of gray. Lastly, the chef says, you need to grind “an offensive amount of black pepper” on top. At least 50 grinds, by Silverman’s count. The result of such craftsmanship is a pasta of deep, sensual delights, at once pungent and rich and al dente chewy. The dish is a reminder that life’s simple pleasures aren’t always so simple."

Address and phone: 403 E 12th St, NY, New York (646-602-1300)
Website: restauranthearth.com

Rothman says: My eyes have seen the glory of many extraordinary pastas in New York City. The tajarin al sugo d’arrosto back when Michael Toscano was still cooking at Eataly. Justin Smillie’s liver-and-sherry–napped estrella at Upland. Mark Ladner’s agnolotti—too perversely delicious to discuss in polite company. But when it comes to canonical pastas, I’ll join the long line of food writers who have struggled to string a sentence together with Marco Canora’s legendary gnocchi on their minds. Biff Grimes called them “eye-rolling pleasure bombs” when he first encountered the gnocchi during Canora’s run at Craft. And even after the chef gave Hearth, his East Village mainstay, a wellness makeover in January, the chubby, sage-buttered beauties stuck around. Canora let me peek over his shoulder while he made them one afternoon last year, and he said something about the finished dough—that it should feel a lot like a woman’s breast, which is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect him to say. I myself have yet to meet a good time gal with a comparably supple pair, but I’m sure we’d get along.

Address and phone: 1782 Madison Ave, Memphis, TN 38104 (901-272-1277)
Website: dancingpigs.com

Miller says: "It's wedding season, and one of the best culinary unions of all-time happened when an African American and former railroad cook named Brady Vincent married barbecue and spaghetti. Vincent's innovation was to swap in barbecue sauce for marinara and barbecued meat—sausage or ground meat—for meatballs. The dish is so simple and so brilliant that I'm amazed that someone didn't invent it centuries ago.

I first heard about barbecue spaghetti at a Southern Foodways Alliance symposium on barbecue. Frank and Eric Vernon (father and son) of the Bar-B-Q shop in Memphis, Tennessee talked about this unusual dish, and how they had inherited the original recipe from Vincent. Though it has some secret elements (after all, it involves barbecue), the recipe is fairly straightforward: Boil some pasta, mix it with your favorite barbecue sauce, add some chopped onions and green bell peppers and top it off with some smoked meat of your choice. At the Bar-B-Q Shop, they coat the pasta with their own "Dancing Pigs Bar-B-Que Sauce," and the mixture is crowned with barbecued pulled pork.  When I made the trek to Memphis and tried this dish, the combination of smoky, sweet and tangy flavors was soul-satisfying.

The Bar-B-Q Shop isn't the exclusive barbecue spaghetti vendor in Memphis. You can get great versions of this dish at Cozy Corner BBQ or Jim Neely's Interstate Barbecue. Since the Bar-B-Q Shop got to me first, it's the one that holds a special place in my heart and my stomach. After you taste this dish, you'll agree, 'What Chef Vincent has put together, let no man pull asunder.'"

Address and phone: 470 Pacific Ave, San Francisco, CA (415-775-8500)
Website: quincerestaurant.com

Moore says: "I really think there is no better pasta than at Quince in San Francisco. And if there is, their chef probably came through the Quince kitchen. When Quince first opened, it really elevated the pasta game in the Bay Area. First, the tajarin: silky, eggy noodles with perfect texture and bite made shiny with just butter and a little sage. And then, the agnolotti dal plin: smaller than any I’ve had—the size of those miniscule candies they give you at the end of a meal in Italy—filled with meat I happen to know was scraped from between the ribs. And with the perfect amount of meaty juice clinging to them. This is humble fare but perfectly made, perfectly portioned and served on a vintage Ginori plate. Mike and I were young line cooks together at Chez Panisse in the late 80s/early 90s and we would have pasta competitions when making staff meal. We parted ways professionally when Mike went to Oliveto. Later, when he opened Quince his pasta was a revelation. It’s a large part of the reason we don’t make pasta at Camino—Mike won pasta."

Address and phone: 9660 Westover Hills, San Antonio, TX (210-684-9660)
Website: violasventanas.com

Tijerina says: "Fideo, the humble noodle dish rooted in Spain that can be served soupy or almost dry like baked pasta, has as many variations as there are families making it. In Mexico, it's called a "dry soup" and is served as a soup course at the beginning of a meal. In South Texas, fideo (traditionally made with vermicelli) is considered a pasta and has comforted many generations.

My favorite South Texas version of fideo is served at Viola’s Ventana, where toasted vermicelli sits in a broth of pureed tomatoes, diced onions, minced garlic, and chicken broth. What makes it special is what it doesn't have—chicken bouillon or too much salt. Viola’s sticks to real ingredients and it shows. There are plenty of fancier versions of fideo around town, including some with beans and ground beef, often called “fideo loco.” And there are the much soupier versions from different regions of Mexico. But when I want a good, simple San Antonio-style fideo, I head over to Viola’s. For now, I’ll wait until the weather gets a little cooler before I get down on some hot, soupy pasta—at least under 80 degrees."

Address and phone: 9575 West Pico Blvd, Los Angeles, CA (310-277-0210)
Website: sottorestaurant.com

Scherer says: "The fact that I grew up Jewish with a grandma who couldn’t cook (bubby Lily won’t read this, she’s 94 and the internet scares her) means I’m always looking for great chicken liver dishes to absolve the shit ones from my childhood. And there’s no dish I would rather stake my cultural identity on than the rigatoni with chicken liver ragu at Sotto. Chef Steve Samson—who’s criminally underrated—starts his ragu with a simple mirepoix and combines it with seared chicken livers and roasted maitakes before finishing it off with with grape must, lemon, and an ungodly amount of parmesan cheese. It’s sauteed with fresh house-made rigatoni and some pasta water to make sure all that earthy liver funk binds to the noodles. All that pleasant metallic taste from the liver is set against what seems like 15 layers of flavor built up in that ragu, and eating it with a rye and amaro cocktail in a setting that can only be described as rustic-dungeon-chic makes it that much better. Again, sorry to bubby Lily, but that gray-ass chopped chicken liver doesn’t even count as food when compared to this."

Address and phone: 181 Thompson St, New York, NY (212-254-3000)
Website: carbonenewyork.com

Kamer says: "With its ingredient list of tomatoes, heavy cream, and Russian booze, vodka (or "pink") sauce is the mescaline of the pasta universe: An odd choice as far as psychedelics go, and the only great sauce that's been cut with three countries' mother ingredients. But for those who truly love it, the only choice, to be sure. At Carbone, you need not be a mescaline connoisseur nor a vodka sauce allegiant to confidently order it sight-unseen. Their sauce is so thick, you can eat it with a fork—literally, because it's also made as an onion soubise, enhancing its Calabrian chile-infused spice, making for one hell of a peppery, fiery, toothy trip. It's vehicle? Perfectly al dente rigatoni, tubulars with which you will chase the dragon. In less poetic terms? You're shoving a massive glob of spice, cream, heat, and gluten in your face. And yes: $30 some-odd bucks it'll run you, but you're already at Carbone, America's acid trip of an Italian restaurant. Fuckin' a, the gentleman has a major credit card. Put it on your tongue. Let the heat rise. Let the endorphins surge. Buy the ticket. Take the ride."

Where: Various locations; thecheesecakefactory.com

Schonberger says: "Southwestern and Cajun cuisine have long fallen out of favor among the fooderati, but thankfully their saucy, spice-blasted wonders live on at chain restaurants around the country. The spirit of the Gang of Five—the Dallas-based architects of "New Southwestern" cooking in the early '80s—endures in every smoked chicken-stuffed egg roll served at T.G.I Friday's, and Paul Prudhomme's influence courses through legions of mass-market jambalayas, from Twin Peaks to Chili's. 

By far the greatest byproduct of this culinary time warp is the "Cajun Chicken Pasta" that you can find weighing down tables at most casual chains, smothered in cream sauce and topped with super-sized servings on blackened chicken and cheese. The finest version of that dish is the "Louisiana Chicken Pasta" at Cheesecake Factory, which benefits from the added textural contrast of panko crumbs crusting the chicken, as well mushrooms and peppers to deepen the sauce. It's as far from the purity of fresh spaghetti and San Marzano tomatoes as you can possibly get on the pasta spectrum, but it's an essential American dish that's almost always the highlight of any big-box menu. If Drake and his girl are always fighting at Cheesecake Factory, it's probably over the last bite of Louisiana Chicken Pasta."

Address and phone: 217 James St, Seattle, WA (206-538-0999)
Website: ilcorvopasta.com

López-Alt says: "When a shop specializes in just one dish, it can mean one of two things: either (a) the chef is so terrible a cook that they can't possible come up with more than one dish, or b) the chef is a loon obsessed with perfecting the minutia of his craft on a level that can only be described as crazy.
Il Corvo pasta is the latter. Open only for lunch and only on weekdays, Il Corvo is not the kind of place you go if you want options. Aside from a few appetizers, your options are two daily choices of pasta. That’s it. But what pasta it is! Chewy where it should be, tender when it needs to be Chef-owner Mike Easton’s pasta has got personality. It's got imperfections and ridges. It’s extruded from antique brass dies that give it old school texture. It comes in shapes you have probably never heard of, but are custom-designed for picking up sauce in just the right way. You may not have a lot of choices, but I guarantee whatever you get will be the best pasta you’ve never had."
 

Address and phone: 100 24th St, Pittsburgh, PA (412-232-3447)
Website: kellyos.com

Scarano says: “You can ask any Pittsburgh kid, they know what this is—even if they’re not Polish.” As a (mostly) Italian-American son of the city, I can vouch for the truth of Kelly O’Connor’s words. The comfort-food staple known as haluski is as fundamental to the ‘Burgh as deep-seated emotional dependency on professional athletics and Iron City beer, and Kelly O’s serves one of the best incarnations. (You can also come through Prospect Heights where I can make you a B+ effort while ranting about the time Ernie Holmes shot at them helicopter cops down the Ohio turnpike n’at—it’s like dinner theater, and it’s traumatizing.) Kelly O’s appeared on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives, and though the Food Network crew did their best to encapsulate the feeling of eating in a strip mall a few storefronts down from a Shop ’n Save, you should supplement the experience with this YouTube video of Kelly O prepping the dish herself. Butter, a head of boiled cabbage, onion, nearly a pound of bacon, egg noodles. It’s a four-minute unbroken take of food preparation, like the Yinzer Jeanne Dielman. It gives me life. It also, blessedly, does not mention topping the savory-and-semi-sweet dish with Romano cheese, like she did for Fieri. There’s been a lot written about Fieri’s misdeeds, but that one truly shocked and appalled me."

Address and phone: 135-58 Lefferts Blvd, Ozone Park, NY (718-845-7587)
Website: N/A

Hofmann says: "I have no great enthusiasm for the great Italian-American mythology—never been able to sit through a Scorsese movie, never cared for the Sopranos. But a classic red-sauce joint? There's not much more satisfying than a time-faded room (invariably peppered with photos of '80s character actors), waiters over the age of 40, and aggressively unstyled, plainly delicious dishes. In deepest suburban Queens, Don Peppe delivers all of the above. Nearly 50 years old, it's consistently packed with families and raucous groups of middle-aged men, and you can spot the newcomers by those who squint to read the menu board on one wall instead of ordering by memory. We always get baked clams to start, the augmented milanese of the veal Don Peppe, and linguine with clam sauce: whole cloves of garlic and chopped clams swimming in parsley-flecked, clam-scented olive oil. Everything's served family-style and doled out tableside by friendly yet business-like waiters, washed down with unstylishly cold, fiendishly drinkable housemade red wine."  

 

Address and phone: 753 Edgewood Ave NE, Atlanta, GA (404-577-2332)
Website: boccalupoatl.com

Kinsman says: "Over the past half-dozen years, my snotty New York City-centric brain has re-trained itself to stop assuming that restaurants might just be “good for Atlanta.” They’re just really damn good. And that perceptual shift has an awful lot to do with dishes like Bruce Logue’s 20-yolk tagliatelle with butter and kimchi at BoccaLupo in Inman Park. Sounds a little nuts, right? It makes all the sense in the world, with pungent, crisp Tuscan kale slicing through the almost comical extravagance of ribbons, crafted from 20 North Georgia-raised farm eggs. And there are wild mushrooms, too! Drenched in silken fat, but never sodden. Plus...PLUS! If you play your cards smartly, you can even sit outside on a lovely covered patio, twirling forks of this madness, chugging Lambrusco by the glass and cursing any culinary myopia that kept you from this dish before now."

Address and phone: 85 10th Ave, New York, NY (212-497-8090)
Website: delposto.com

Dieselboy says: "If Eater restaurant editor Bill Addison recently referred to Del Posto as “America’s High Church Of Pasta," then Chef Mark Ladner is its archbishop. He and his brigade put out some of the most flawless pasta I have ever experienced. And when it comes to my personal favorite, lasagna, they bang out a 100 layer version that is a feat in culinary engineering. They construct this towering behemoth using paper thin sheets of yolk-reinforced fresh pasta, a two-day pork and veal bolognese sauce, San Marzano marinara, and a classic besciamella. The lasagna is served in inch-thick slices, seared off in clarified butter (to give it crispy edges), warmed through in an oven, and finally placed on a small pool of a super reduced and flavorful marinara. I’ve explored, studied, and written about lasagna, and this right here is platinum status. I hold the now-impossible-to-get Torrisi Italian Specialties lasagna as my eternal favorite of favorites. But the Del Posto 100-Layer is must have, must eat pasta all day long."

Address and phone: 843 Main St, Cambridge, MA (617-497-5511)
Website: craigieonmain.com

Hiersteiner says: "No one deserves more credit for the great leap forward in Boston's dining scene than Tony Maws. The famously intense, Sox cap wearing native son helped bring reinvigorated food attention to the city with his brilliant "refined rustic" cooking at Craigie on Main, for which he won a 2011 James Beard Award for Best Chef: Northeast. He also owns and runs its more casual sister restaurant, Kirkland Tap & Trotter. 

Although Maws made his name with booming nose-to-tail cooking, exemplified by the crispy pig's head for two that he popularized at Craigie on Main, his finesse, technique, and sense of place jump out in dishes like my bucket list pasta plate: phytoplankton pasta a la chitarra with uni and clams. By incorporating freeze dried, powdered microscopic seaweed into pasta dough and layering the cooked noodles with sweet local clams and luscious uni, Maws and his new Craigie chef de cuisine, Aaaron Chambers, created a singularly explosive, briny, verdant bite of coastal New England. I remember feeling transported to my childhood, standing on a wind-whipped, salt-sprayed Cape Cod beach with my grandmother, when I tasted it - and more than a little bereft when the last bite was gone." 
 

Address and phone: 329 E 1st St, Los Angeles, CA (213-346-9762)
Website: N/A

Cushman says: "We found Marugame Monzo by accident. We were waiting in line for ramen at Daikokuya in downtown L.A. when Marugame opened its doors, so we popped our heads in to see what was going on next door. Inside we found a food bar separated by a giant window, and behind that glass chefs were preparing handmade udon noodles, made fresh and cut to order. The next day we went back to try the menu and discovered their quintessential noodle dish, "Uni Udon Carbonara." The texture of the udon noodle is perfect; it's toothy and adeptly picks up the sauce. The restaurant uses different rouxs like curry and cream as a base for the dish. It was very Japanese with a little Italian twist."